Abstract
Biomass burning is considered an important source of indoor and outdoor air pollutants worldwide. Due to competitive costs and climate change sustainability compared to fossil fuels, biomass combustion for residential heating is increasing and expected to become the major source of primary particulate matter emission over the next 5–15 years. The understanding of health effects and measures necessary to reduce biomass emissions of harmful compounds is mandatory to protect public health. The intent of this review is to report available data on ultrafine particles (UFPs, i.e., particles with diameter smaller than 100 nm) emitted by residential biomass combustion and their effects on human health (in vitro and in vivo studies). Indeed, as far as we know, papers focusing specifically on UFPs originating from residential biomass combustion and their impact on human health are still lacking.
Highlights
Biomass burning is a significant air pollution source with impacts on both local and global scales, threatening air quality and visibility, and affecting the Earth’s radiative budget with effects on climate; in addition, a great concern is related to health effects [1]
A different approach to achieve ultrafine particle source apportionment in ambient air was used by Gu et al [54] who performed a Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF) analysis separately on particle number size distribution data measured at a background site and PM10 chemical composition at an urban traffic site in Germany. Their data interpretation suggested that ultrafine particles peaking at 70–80 nm in terms of number concentration were associated to stationary combustion; this source was well correlated with wood burning for residential heating detected in PM10
Corsini et al [13,44] and Marabini et al [82] demonstrated that UFP collected in winter or summer have a different biological behavior: those sampled in summer are more pro-inflammatory, while winter ones are more genotoxic. This can be explained by a different sensitivity to the different chemical components found in UFPs depending on season—e.g., polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are higher in winter time—while endotoxin is higher in summer time resulting in a different cellular reactivity [44,84,85]
Summary
Biomass burning is a significant air pollution source with impacts on both local and global scales, threatening air quality and visibility, and affecting the Earth’s radiative budget with effects on climate; in addition, a great concern is related to health effects [1]. It is noteworthy that an increase in the relative contribution from these sources is expected due to the decline of tailpipe emissions from motor vehicles as a consequence of improved technologies and more stringent regulation on emissions as, e.g., those in force in the European community This variety of sources has a different spatial distribution of emissions compared to road traffic and presents highly specific physicochemical properties in relation to the process which originates the ultrafine particles ([28] and references therein). The health impact of UFPs indoor is of great concern because in many countries the majority of people spend most of their time in confined environments Indoor particles comprise both primary and secondary aerosols emitted by indoor sources (e.g., domestic biomass burning, vacuum cleaners, hair dryers, incense burning and candling, ironing, cooking, laser printing, and smoking in addition to emissions related to workplaces) as well as outdoor aerosols infiltrated indoor [28,39,40]. An increasing number of studies dealing with biomass burning assessment and toxicological outcomes are available for larger aerosol size fractions
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