CNH: Cooking Up Clean Air: Scaled-Up Air Quality and Health Impacts of Clean Cookstoves in Ghana

将近半个世界？大多数生活在发展中国家的美国人每天都在明火上做饭。这会释放温室气体，使人们暴露在有毒排放物中，从而导致呼吸道疾病。在加纳和其他“脑膜炎地带”的国家，烹饪产生的排放物与脑膜炎有关。我们假设，广泛使用高效或“清洁”炉灶——即使燃烧同样的材料，也比明火产生更少的烟雾——将减少人们对有毒排放物的接触，改善健康状况，并改善区域空气质量。为了验证这一假设，我们将在加纳北部的家庭中引入炉灶。除了确定它们是否确实改善了空气质量和健康状况外，我们还将探讨鼓励或阻碍炉灶使用的社会和经济因素，并考虑气候变化的影响。我们的方法包括：1)一项旨在增加高效炉灶使用的随机实验；2)社会调查测量烹饪行为和自我报告健康结果的影响；3)收集物理数据，以衡量对排放和空气质量的影响；4)烹饪方式、空气质量、气候变化、呼吸系统疾病和细菌性脑膜炎之间关系的综合建模；5)模拟排放和气候变化情景及其随时间推移对区域空气质量和健康结果的潜在影响。我们的研究结果将加强对影响非洲萨赫勒地区（特别是加纳北部）空气质量的社会和物理系统的理解，为世界上观测数据稀少的地区提供有价值的观测结果，并赋予非洲社区权力。这项工作将提供定量知识，可用于在面临未来威胁时制定控制脑膜炎传播的新战略。我们的研究结果还将揭示人类行为、空气质量、气候变化、暴露和健康结果之间的相互作用，以及这些因素的未来变化如何在非洲和其他地区结合起来。作为该项目的一部分，开发和应用的价格合理且有效的仪器将在全球范围内进行测试并可供使用。此外，我们将开发新的大学课程，并培训非洲和美国大学生进行数据收集。最后，我们的参与式流行病学方法，即社区成员帮助测量空气质量和报告疾病，将增强无法获得疫苗的当地社区的权能。最终，我们将与社区合作，创造情景，使烹饪方法的实际变化与气候过程相互作用，从而改善空气质量，减轻非洲萨赫勒地区呼吸系统疾病和细菌性脑膜炎的负担。

Nearly half the world?s population, mostly in the developing world, cooks over open flames on a daily basis. This releases greenhouse gas and exposes people to toxic emissions that contribute to respiratory disease. In Ghana and other countries in the "meningitis belt," emissions from cooking have been linked to meningitis. We hypothesize that widespread use of efficient, or "clean", cookstoves - which produce less smoke than open fires even while burning the same available materials - will reduce people's exposure to toxic emissions, improve health outcomes, and improve regional air quality. To test this hypothesis, we will introduce cookstoves into households in northern Ghana. In addition to determining whether they do, in fact, improve air quality and health outcomes, we will explore the social and economic factors that encourage or discourage cook stove use, and consider the impacts of climate change. Our methods combine 1) a randomized experiment intended to increase use of efficient cookstoves; 2) social surveys to measure effects on cooking behavior and self-reported health outcomes; 3) collection of physical data to measure the impacts on emissions and air quality; 4) integrated modeling of the relationships among cooking practices, air quality, climate variability, respiratory illness and bacterial meningitis; and 5) simulations of emissions and climate change scenarios and their potential impacts on regional air quality and health outcomes over time.Our results will enhance understanding of the social and physical systems that shape air quality in the African Sahel and particularly in northern Ghana, contribute valuable observations in a part of the world where observations are sparse, and empower communities in Africa. The work will provide quantitative knowledge that can be used to develop novel strategies to control the spread of meningitis in the face of future threats. Our results will also shed light on the interactions among human behavior, air quality, climate variability, exposure, and health outcomes, and how future changes in these factors may combine in Africa and other areas. Affordable and effective instrumentation developed and applied as part of this project will be tested and available for use in areas around the globe. Further, we will develop novel university curricula and train African and American university students in data collection. Finally, our participatory epidemiology approach, in which community members help measure air quality and report disease, will empower local communities that do not have access to vaccines. Ultimately, we will work with communities to generate scenarios in which realistic changes in cooking practices interact with climatic processes to produce improvements in air quality that reduce the burden of respiratory illness and bacterial meningitis in the African Sahel.