Air Pollution and Human Exposure

Human exposure to air pollution is believed to cause severe health effects. Studying the human health effects of indoor air pollution has often been challenging, because it is difficult to isolate from other factors that also influence health, such as smoking, diet, and exposure to outdoor air quality. It has been found that increases in fine airborne particles known as particulates (largely from fossil fuel combustion) substantially increases the risk of death from cardiopulmonary disease and lung cancer because they constrict the blood vessels causing heart attacks. Their conclusions hold true even after compensating for risk factors like obesity and smoking.

In rural homes in India especially in the kitchen where pollution levels often are high, because of the poor ventilation and dispersion conditions and high density of pollution sources (the TraditionalCookingDevices which burn unprocessed biomass) . Many factors influence human health, and a good assessment of human air pollution exposure is, therefore, crucial for a proper determination of possible links between air pollution and health effects.

Assessment of human exposure to indoor air pollution may be carried out by use of the following methods:

categorical classification,
analysis of air pollution data from routine monitoring networks,
personal portable exposure monitors,
or application of mathematical air pollution exposure models.

The categorical classification is a crude indirect method based on indicators of exposure such as type of residence, type of job, presence of indoor sources, etc. Categorical classification is generally inadequate for application in air pollution epidemiology. The optimal solution is clearly a combination of all the methods, but the available resources often set a limit to how far the assessment is carried out, and the choice of strategy is , therefore, often very important for the outcome of the final study.

Human exposure studies to air pollutants indicate that indoor levels of many pollutants may be 25 times, and occasionally more than 100 times, higher than outdoor levels. These levels of indoor air pollutants are of particular concern because it is estimated that most women and children in the rural homes spend as much as 90% of their time indoors.

Awareness of indoor air pollution as an environmental issue is relatively new. Indoor air pollutants can cause long and short term health effects, especially when concentrations build up. One challenge for researchers today is to increase our understanding of the possible health impacts of being exposed to mixtures of indoor air pollutants at low levels for long periods of time

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External links and references

http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/targetng.html#Pollution%20and%20Health

http://www.grida.no/enrin/htmls/tadjik/soe2/eng/htm/air/state.htm

http://www.ce.gatech.edu/~mhbergin/

http://www.mi.uni-hamburg.de/technische_meteorologie/cost/cost_615/projects_inventory/projects/project056.html

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User:Dr Karabi Dutta 22 January 2004

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Page created: 22 January 2004; Last edited: 15 October 2004; Version: 3
Knowledge Bank text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

Pagename: AirPollution @HEDON: YPAA

Air Pollution and Human Exposure

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