Abstract
Biomass burning for home energy use contributes to negative health outcomes and environmental degradation. As part of the REACCTING study (Research on Emissions, Air quality, Climate, and Cooking Technologies in Northern Ghana), personal exposure to carbon monoxide (CO) was measured to gauge the effects of introducing two different cookstove types over four intervention groups. A novel Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) Beacon system was deployed on a subset of those CO measurement periods to estimate participants’ distances to their most-used cooking areas during the sampling periods. In addition to presenting methods and validation for the BLE Beacon system, here we present pollution exposure assessment modeling results using two different approaches, in which time-activity (proximity) data is used to: (1) better understand exposure and behaviors within and away from homes; and (2) predict personal exposure via microenvironment air quality measurements. Model fits were improved in both cases, demonstrating the benefits of the proximity measurements.
Highlights
Air pollution from solid fuels for cooking and heating is responsible for an estimated 2.6 million premature deaths globally [1]
With a budget of $120 per set of equipment, we were able to add temporally resolved proximity to stove data to improve our understanding of personal carbon monoxide (CO) exposure from REACCTING
We find that even in the dynamic and predominantly outdoor homes in Northern Ghana, using the proximity data provided reasonably good performance in predicting personal CO exposure
Summary
Air pollution from solid fuels for cooking and heating is responsible for an estimated 2.6 million premature deaths globally [1]. In the household energy field, researchers are often interested in measuring how a change in technology (e.g., a cleaner stove) affects personal exposure to air pollution and associated health outcomes [2,3,4]. This task is complicated by the fact that individuals are exposed to a vast array of pollutants from a range of sources, many of which are beyond the control of the study. The degree to which this affects a particular study depends on the study design (e.g., randomized vs observational) and the particular context (e.g., the contribution of stove-related sources to personal exposure).
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