EXPLORING RESPIRATORY HEALTH OUTCOMES FROM SUSTAINED USE OF EFFICIENT COOKSTOVES

描述(申请人提供)：每年有近200万人死于固体生物质燃烧造成的室内空气污染，其中99%的死亡发生在发展中国家。生物质燃烧是急性呼吸道感染(ARI)和慢性阻塞性肺疾病(COPD)的主要危险因素，特别是在妇女和儿童中。仅在印度，固体生物质的低效燃烧就导致每年40万人过早死亡。研究表明，生物质燃烧是COPD的一个比吸烟更大的风险因素，特别是在印度，1.56亿家庭仍然依赖固体生物质做饭和取暖。清洁高效和低排放的炉灶为这一公共卫生挑战提供了解决方案，但它们的使用和长期使用一直令人失望。虽然在实验室中可以生产出更高效、更减排的炉灶，但事实证明，设计它们以满足用户在各种社会、经济、文化和社区环境中的需求是具有挑战性的。我们的R21试点研究将促进随后的RO1提案，重点是农村家庭持续和有效地使用清洁炉灶，它们对室内实时排放的影响，以及由此导致的农村妇女和儿童呼吸健康的变化。在这项试点中，我们将实施一项为期两年的整群随机试验，以评估促进和阻碍清洁炉具技术持续使用的因素。这项研究将比较传统燃木炉(对照条件)和改进型燃木炉对妇女和儿童呼吸健康的影响。我们将在印度安得拉邦和拉贾斯坦邦的120户家庭中实施这项研究。我们的调查团队来自医学、生物统计学、工程学和社会科学，在检查改善炉灶使用的障碍方面具有强大的跨学科方法，并拥有在印度农村进行研究的丰富经验。R21的具体目标是：1)评估促使和阻碍印度农村贫困人口持续使用清洁炉灶技术的因素，以便我们能够开发更精细的关键干预措施，专注于改善呼吸健康。2)生成效应量数据，以确定一项关键试验的可行性并告知样本量，该试验的主要目标是持续改善印度农村妇女和儿童的呼吸健康(以FEV1衡量)。3)生成清洁炉灶技术的初步排放数据(基于颗粒物质量和表面积，CO，SOx)及其对呼吸健康结果的影响，这将有助于开发关键的清洁炉灶干预措施。为了实现这些目标，我们将获得必要的初步数据，以继续进行更大规模的RO1干预，以检查持续使用清洁炉灶的效果以及由于印度农村室内空气污染减少而导致的妇女和儿童的呼吸健康结果。我们的学习和研究计划与NIEHS和全球清洁炉灶联盟的使命保持一致，即通过在全球范围内有效使用清洁和高效的炉灶技术来解决妇女和儿童的健康问题。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Nearly 2 million people die annually due to indoor air pollution from solid biomass combustion and 99 percent of these deaths are in developing countries. Biomass combustion is a leading risk factor in acute respiratory infections (ARI) and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), especially among women and children. Inefficient combustion of solid biomass leads to 400,000 annual premature deaths in India alone. Studies suggest that biomass combustion is an even greater risk factor for COPD than smoking, particularly in India where 156 million households still depend on solid biomass for cooking and heating. Clean - high efficiency and low emissions - cookstoves offer a solution to this public health challenge, but their uptake and prolonged use have been disappointing. Although more efficient and emissions-reducing stoves can be produced in the laboratory, designing them to meet the needs of users in various social, economic, cultural, and community contexts has proved challenging. Our pilot R21 study will facilitate a subsequent RO1 proposal focused on sustained and effective use of clean cookstoves by rural households, their effect on real time indoor emissions, and on resulting changes in the respiratory health of rural women and children. In this pilot, we will implement a two-year cluster-randomized trial to evaluate factors that enable and hinder sustained use of clean cookstove technologies. The study will compare the effect of traditional wood burning stoves (the control condition) to that of improved wood burning stoves on the respiratory health of women and children. We will implement this study in 120 households in Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan, India. Our team of investigators comes from medicine, biostatistics, engineering, and social science with a strong transdisciplinary approach to examining barriers to improved cookstove use and with substantial experience doing research in rural India. The specific aims of this R21 are: 1) Evaluate factors which enable and hinder sustained use of clean cookstove technologies by the rural poor in India so we can develop a more refined pivotal intervention focused on improving respiratory health. 2) To generate effect size data that establish the feasibility and inform the sample size o a pivotal trial whose primary objective will be sustained improvements in the respiratory health (measured by FEV1) of women and children in rural India. 3) To generate preliminary emissions data (particulate matter - mass and surface area based, CO, SOX) from clean cookstove technology and its effect on respiratory health outcomes that will facilitate the development of a pivotal clean cookstove intervention. In achieving these aims, we will then have necessary preliminary data to proceed with a larger scale RO1 intervention to examine the effect of sustained use of clean cookstoves and respiratory health outcomes in women and children due to reduced indoor air pollution in rural India. Our study and research program are aligned with the NIEHS and Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves' mission to address the health of women and children through effective use of clean and efficient cookstove technologies worldwide.