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An Update on U.S. EPA Household Energy Research
Citation:
Champion, W., C. Williams, L. Virtaranta, M. Barnes, AND J. Jetter. An Update on U.S. EPA Household Energy Research. ETHOS (Engineers in Technical and Humanitarian Opportunities of Service) Annual Conference, Kirkland, Washington, January 24 - 26, 2020.
Impact/Purpose:
Household air pollution from solid-fuel stoves is the most significant environmental problem that affects human health worldwide. The WHO (World Health Organization) estimates that 3-4 million premature deaths annually are caused by household air pollution, mainly from emissions from cookstoves in the developing world. Additionally, solid fuel use for household energy contributes significantly to ambient black carbon, and transboundary transport of pollutants from millions of stoves in Asia affects ambient air quality in the western U.S. The EPA ORD (Office of Research and Development) is conducting research and activities to address the problem in coordination with a much larger international effort led by the Clean Cooking Alliance. This presentation provides an overview of ongoing EPA household energy research including (1) evaluation of performance of stoves and fuels with a new ISO (International Organization for Standardization) laboratory testing protocol, (2) mutagency potential assessment of emissions from pellet-fueled stoves, and (3) evaluation of SOA (secondary organic aerosol) from cookstove emissions.
Description:
Household air pollution is the world’s leading environmental health risk factor and contributes significantly to ambient climate-forcing. In an effort to characterize the emissions of dozens of stove designs (representing hundreds of stove models), the U.S. EPA’s Household Energy Lab has historically provided baseline emissions and performance test data for a suite of cookstove/fuel combinations. It has also served to provide stove emissions samples (typically in the form of filter-sampled fine PM (particulate matter)) for use in chemical (e.g., particle-phase polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) and biological analyses (e.g., mutagenicity, gene expression). In the past year, three primary studies have been employed: (1) a comparison of emissions metrics between former and current standardized cookstove test protocols (WBT and ISO 19867-1, respectively) for a suite of stove/fuel combinations, (2) an assessment of the mutagenicity of PM from pellet-fueled cookstoves, and (3) an implementation of an oxidative flow reactor to assess the chemical and biological characteristics of cookstove secondary organic aerosol (SOA). Data analysis is on-going for all three studies, and therefore study methodologies and objectives (alongside limited preliminary data) are the focus of this presentation.