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

每年约有290万人因室内空气污染引起的疾病过早死亡。很大一部分病例是由于家庭依赖生物质燃料和暴露于生物质烟雾中的空气中有毒物质。美国政府投入了大量资金来对抗暴露。然而，用于改善空气质量的干预措施的潜在支出的成本效益和可持续性取决于对当地情况的了解，包括对调节环境污染风险的战略及其与社区健康模式的相互作用的认识。众所周知，接触空气中的有毒物质对社会经济地位不利的个人的影响不成比例。这项研究旨在培养一名研究生在严谨的经验数据收集和分析方法方面的能力，探讨对污染暴露的风险和脆弱性的文化认知与生物结果之间的差异。此外，该项目将通过国际科学合作建设能力和科学基础设施，并通过向从事与空气污染有关问题的组织广泛传播研究结果，加强公众的科学理解。在佛罗里达大学克里斯托弗·麦卡蒂博士的指导下，大卫·狄龙将调查对风险和脆弱性的认知是否会调节人类接触来自生物质燃料的空气中有毒物质。该研究在赞比亚东部省进行，这是研究空气中有毒物质风险的理想场所；在撒哈拉以南非洲，家庭空气污染在造成高疾病负担的十大风险因素中排名第四。先前关于生物质燃料使用的研究表明，传统炉灶的风险认知和文化方面都显著影响个人暴露水平。本研究采用有目的的匹配抽样设计，根据家庭燃料的主要来源对家庭进行分层，同时捕捉当地人口统计学的变化。共同指数使用通过半结构化访谈收集的人种学数据和关于空气中有毒物质暴露的环境健康数据，测试了将文化建构的风险感知与具体和可测量的生物学结果联系起来的假设。从智力上讲，这项研究的结果有助于理解风险感知和当地生物学如何影响人与环境相互作用和健康不平等的模式。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.