The effect of exposure to biomass smoke on respiratory symptoms in adult rural and urban Nepalese populations

Environmental Health

Research

Om P Kurmi¹  Graham S Devereux²  Steven Sadhra³  Kin Bong Hubert Lam³  Jon G Ayres³  Padam Simkhada⁴  William CS Smith⁵  Santosh Gaihre⁶  Markus FC Steiner⁶  Sean Semple⁶ 

[1] Clinical Trials Service Unit & Epidemiological Studies Unit, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, OX3 7LF, Oxford, UK;Department of Child Health, Royal Aberdeen Children’s Hospital, University of Aberdeen, AB25 2ZG, Aberdeen, UK;Institute of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, University of Birmingham, B15 2TT, Birmingham, UK;School of Health and Related Research, University of Sheffield, S10 2TN, Sheffield, UK;School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Aberdeen, AB24 3FX, Aberdeen, UK;Scottish Centre for Indoor Air, Division of Applied Health Sciences, School of Medicine, University of Aberdeen, AB24 3FX, Aberdeen, UK;

关键词: Respiratory symptoms;    Breathlessness;    Phlegm;    Solid fuel;    Household air pollution;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1476-069X-13-92

 received in 2014-06-18, accepted in 2014-10-28,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundHalf of the world’s population is exposed to household air pollution from biomass burning. This study aimed to assess the relationship between respiratory symptoms and biomass smoke exposure in rural and urban Nepal.MethodsA cross-sectional study of adults (16+ years) in a rural population (n = 846) exposed to biomass smoke and a non-exposed urban population (n = 802) in Nepal. A validated questionnaire was used along with measures of indoor air quality (PM2.5 and CO) and outdoor PM2.5.ResultsBoth men and women exposed to biomass smoke reported more respiratory symptoms compared to those exposed to clean fuel. Women exposed to biomass were more likely to complain of ever wheeze (32.0 % vs. 23.5%; p = 0.004) and breathlessness (17.8% vs. 12.0%, p = 0.017) compared to males with tobacco smoking being a major risk factor. Chronic cough was similar in both the biomass and non-biomass smoke exposed groups whereas chronic phlegm was reported less frequently by participants exposed to biomass smoke. Higher PM2.5 levels (≥2 SDs of the 24-hour mean) were associated with breathlessness (OR = 2.10, 95% CI 1.47, 2.99) and wheeze (1.76, 1.37, 2.26).ConclusionsThe study suggests that while those exposed to biomass smoke had higher prevalence of respiratory symptoms, urban dwellers (who were exposed to higher ambient air pollution) were more at risk of having productive cough.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Kurmi et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.