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

世界上近一半的人口？S的人口，大部分在发展中国家，每天都在明火上做饭。这会释放温室气体，并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，烹饪排放的废气与脑膜炎有关。我们假设，广泛使用高效或“清洁”的炉灶--即使在燃烧相同可用材料的情况下，这种炉灶产生的烟雾也比明火少--将减少人们接触有毒气体的机会，改善健康状况，并改善地区空气质量。为了验证这一假设，我们将把炉灶引入加纳北部的家庭。除了确定它们是否确实改善了空气质量和健康结果外，我们还将探索鼓励或不鼓励使用灶具的社会和经济因素，并考虑气候变化的影响。我们的方法结合了1)旨在增加高效炉灶使用的随机实验；2)社会调查，以衡量对烹饪行为和自我报告的健康结果的影响；3)收集物理数据，以衡量对排放和空气质量的影响；4)对烹饪做法、空气质量、气候变异性、呼吸系统疾病和细菌性脑膜炎之间的关系进行综合建模；5)对排放和气候变化情景及其随时间对区域空气质量和健康结果的潜在影响进行模拟。我们的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，在世界上观测稀少的地区贡献有价值的观测，并增强非洲社区的能力。这项工作将提供量化的知识，可用于开发新的战略，以控制脑膜炎的传播，以应对未来的威胁。我们的结果还将揭示人类行为、空气质量、气候变异性、暴露和健康结果之间的相互作用，以及这些因素未来的变化可能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负担得起和有效的仪器将得到测试，并可在全球各地使用。此外，我们将制定新的大学课程，并培训非洲和美国大学生收集数据。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能力。最终，我们将与社区合作，创造出烹饪实践的现实变化与气候过程相互作用的情景，以改善空气质量，减轻非洲萨赫勒地区呼吸道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.