Cooking with an open woodfire is associated with short-term increases in blood pressure and pulse among rural Guatemalan women

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Several studies have demonstrated a relationship between exposure to outdoor air pollution or secondhand tobacco smoke and increased blood pressure. Fewer studies have explored the impact of household air pollution from cooking with biomass fuels. METHODS: We measured blood pressure and pulse among 388 young, non-smoking, women in rural Guatemala who participated in a follow-up study of a chimney stove intervention trial. Although all women had a chimney stove during the follow-up period, 16.8% of women reported use of an open fire to cook their most recent meal on the day of blood pressure measurement. We used multivariate linear regression models to explore the relationship between open fire in the past 24 hours and blood pressure. We adjusted for time-varying and fixed covariates and included random intercepts for each mother. RESULTS: Cooking with an open fire instead of a chimney stove within a 24 hour period prior to blood pressure measurement was associated with a 1.43 mmHg increase in diastolic blood pressure (95% CI=0.19 to 2.68), a non-significant 0.81 mm Hg increase in systolic blood pressure (95%CI= -0.47 to 2.09) , a 1.19 mmHg increase in mean arterial pressure (95% CI=0.03 to 2.35), and a 1.83 beats per minute increase in pulse rate (95% CI=0.38 to 3.28) after adjustment for age, body mass index number of children, maternal education, history of smoking, dirt floor in home, being the primary cook for the household, daily average temperature, season, day of week, and time of day. DISCUSSION: In this population of young women, recent use of an open fire was associated with statistically significant increases in blood pressure and pulse rate. These results show that transient acute increases in biomass smoke exposure are associated with elevated blood pressure, even in normotensive women.