Doctoral Dissertation Research: Risk Perceptions as Potential Mediators of Environmental Toxicants Associated with Biomass Fuel Use

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Approximately 2.9 million people die prematurely from conditions arising from indoor air pollution annually. A significant proportion of cases are due to household reliance on biomass fuels and exposure to airborne toxicants in biomass smoke. Significant expenditures are made by the U.S. government to combat exposure. The cost-effectiveness and sustainability of potential spending on interventions to improve air quality depend on understanding the local context, however, including perceptions of strategies to mediate risk from environmental pollution and their interaction with community health patterns. Airborne toxicant exposure are already known to disproportionately impact individuals from disadvantaged socioeconomic status. This study, which trains a graduate student in methods of rigorous, empirical data collection and analysis, explores variation between cultural perceptions of risk and vulnerability to pollution exposure and biological outcomes. Further, this project will build capacity and scientific infrastructure through international scientific cooperation, and enhance public scientific understanding by broadly disseminating findings to organizations engaged in issues related to air pollution.David Dillon, under the supervision of Dr. Christopher McCarty of the University of Florida, will investigate whether perceptions of risk and vulnerability mediate human exposure to airborne toxicants from biomass fuels. The research takes place in Eastern Province, Zambia, an ideal setting for studying airborne toxicant risk; in sub-Saharan Africa, household air pollution (HAP) is fourth in the top ten list of risk factors for high burden of disease. Previous research on biomass fuel use demonstrates that both risk perception and cultural aspects of traditional cookstoves significantly influence individual exposure levels. This study employs a purposive matched sampling design that stratifies households by the primary source of household fuel while capturing variation in local demography. The co-PI tests hypotheses linking culturally constructed risk perception to specific and measurable biological outcomes using ethnographic data collected through semi-structured interviews and environmental health data on airborne toxicant exposure. Intellectually, findings from this research contribute to understanding how risk perception and local biology contribute to patterns of human-environment interaction and health inequalities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.