Grantee Research Project Results
Impacts of Household Sources on Outdoor Pollution at Village and Regional Scales in India
EPA Grant Number: R835425Title: Impacts of Household Sources on Outdoor Pollution at Village and Regional Scales in India
Investigators: Smith, Kirk R. , Bond, Tami C. , Edwards, Rufus D. , Seinfeld, John , Arora, Narendra
Institution: University of California - Berkeley , The INCLEN trust , University of California - Irvine , California Institute of Technology
Current Institution: University of California - Berkeley , California Institute of Technology , The INCLEN trust , University of California - Irvine
EPA Project Officer: Keating, Terry
Project Period: April 1, 2014 through March 31, 2017 (Extended to March 31, 2019)
Project Amount: $1,495,454
RFA: Measurements and Modeling for Quantifying Air Quality and Climatic Impacts of Residential Biomass or Coal Combustion for Cooking, Heating, and Lighting (2012) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Air Quality and Air Toxics , Climate Change , Tribal Environmental Health Research , Air
Objective:
In journal articles: 1) expanded and improved household fuel emissions database for India, 2) model of household contributions to ambient air pollution in central India and assessment of key points for model improvement and evaluation of main contributors to remaining uncertainty, 3) novel year-long assessment of relationship between village ambient pollution, personal exposures from household sources in two villages, and meteorological parameters; 4) optimization of clean cookstove dissemination programs to reduce human exposures.
Approach:
Aim I. Determine what fraction of the two major health-damaging outdoor air pollution species (PM2.5/PM10 and ozone) are attributable to household sources in central India.
- Derive improved emissions inventories from household combustion based on additional measurements in central India
- Model primary and secondary PM and O3 production from newly updated emissions databases to obtain a range of estimates.
- Determine major sources of uncertainty in these estimates and recommend the most critical measurements or modeling needed to reduce them
Aim II. Characterize the "neighborhood" PM pollution due to household combustion in two typical villages in the continental climate regime that characterizes central India
- Over a year, instrument two villages in Haryana to separate local from "imported" ambient PM pollution.
- Develop models describing the situation in those villages. In particular, what portion of household exposures is due to local and imported neighborhood pollution?
Aim III. Based on the results of the first two aims, recommend conditions to increase the chance for clean fuel/combustion interventions to be most effective in reducing total health-damaging human exposures based on population distributions, fuel-use surveys, and historical meteorological patterns, including frequency of ground-level inversions. Additionally, to estimate the range of human exposures in central India potentially due to neighborhood pollution from households.
Expected Results:
The proposed work will be the first to quantitatively document the contribution of household sources to ambient pollution in a developing country both at the regional and local scales. It will provide an entirely new category of risk assessment and potential approaches to risk management, including novel approaches to cookstove dissemination.