We contributed, along with many other participants, in the review and assessment of the HAP evidence base for developing guidelines for stove emissions for PM2.5 and CO such that the 2005 WHO Air Quality Guidelines can be maintained in households. These Indoor AQGs were released in November 2014, which marked the first time in human history, when it will no longer be possible to claim a stove is truly "improved" or "clean" without reference to authoritative global set of health-based guidelines.
Our group contributed heavily to Chapter 11 of the working Group II report entitled Human Health: Impacts, Adaptation, and Co-Benefits. Working Group II assesses the scientific, technical, environmental, economic and social aspects of the vulnerability (sensitivity and adaptability) to climate change of, and the negative and positive consequences for, ecological systems, socio-economic sectors and human health, with an emphasis on regional sectoral and cross-sectoral issues.
All 30 chapters can be downloaded from the IPCC WGII website. Direct links to Ch 11 publications follow.
Smith KR, Woodward A, Campbell-Lendrum D, Chadee D, Honda Y, Liu Q, Olwoch J, Revich B, Sauerborn R. Human Health: Impacts, Adaptation, and Co-benefits. Ch 11 in Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Vol I: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Field, C.B., V. Barros, D.J.Dokken, et al. (eds.)]. Cambridge Univ Press, Cambridge, UK and NYC, 2014
Woodward A, Smith KR, Campbell-Lendrum D, Chadee DD, Honda Y, Liu Q, Olwach J, Revich B, Sauerborn R, Chafe Z, Confalonieri U, Haines A. Climate change and health: on the latest IPCC report, The Lancet, Available online 2 April 2014. ISSN 0140-6736, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(14)60576-6.
We contributed to the overall management and organization of the Global Energy Assessment (GEA) and in particular to Chapter 4, Energy and Health (below). The GEA involves specialists from a range of scientific and engineering disciplines, industry groups, and policy areas in defining a new global energy policy agenda, that transforms the way society thinks about, uses and delivers energy and to facilitate equitable and sustainable energy services for all, in particular the two billion people who currently lack access to clean, modern energy. GEA is the first ever fully integrated energy assessment that analyzes energy challenges, opportunities and strategies, for developing, industrialized and emerging economies. Click here to see the full table of contents.
All 25 chapters can be downloaded from IIASA. Attached here are two sections:
Key Findings, Technical Summary, and Summary for Policy Makers
Chapter 4: Energy and Health, Smith KR, Balakrishnan K, Butler C, Chafe Z, Fairlie I, Kinney P, Kjellstrom T, Mauzerall DL, McKone T, McMichael A, Schneider M, Wilkinson P, 2012. In Global Energy Assessment: Toward a Sustainable Future, ed. GEA Team. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press and International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
Smith KR, Frumkin H, Balakrishnan K, Butler CD, Chafe Z, Fairlie I, Kinney P, Kjellstrom T, Mauzerall DL, McKone TE, McMichael AJ, Schneider M, Energy and human health, Annual Review of Public Health 34: 159-188, 2013.
The Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution's Task Force on Health has requested a review of air pollution and human health implications of household heating with solid fuels, including wood, charcoal, and coal. This review, spearheaded by the World Health Organization's European Centre for Environment and Health, is being conducted by an international panel of researchers, and will be published in late 2014 as a policy-oriented primer on household heating, solid fuels, and health.
The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors 2010 Study (GBD 2010) is the single largest and most detailed scientific effort ever conducted to quantify levels and trends in health. Led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, it was truly a global effort with 488 authors from 50 countries, including 26 low- and middle-income countries.
We contributed substantially to the expert group on Household Air Pollution of the GBD/CRA study and assisted with the risk assessments on ambient air pollution and secondhand tobacco smoke. The following are some of our publications that have come from this set of activities.
- Lim S.S and many others (including KR Smith), 2012, A comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 1990-2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010, Lancet, 380: 2224-60.
- Balakrishnan K, Ghosh S, Ganguli B, Sambandam S, Bruce NG, Barnes DF, Smith KR. (2013) State and national household concentrations of PM2.5 from solid cookfuel use: Results from measurements and modeling in India for estimation of the global burden of disease. Environmental Health 2013, 12:77 doi:10.1186/1476-069X-12-77
- Burnett RT, Pope CA, Ezzati M, Olives C, Lim SS, Mehta S, Shin HH, Singh G, Hubbell B, Brauer M, Anderson HR, Smith KR, Balmes JR, Bruce NG, Kan H, Laden F, Prüss-Ustün A, Turner MC, Gapstur SM, Diver WR, Cohen A (2014). An Integrated Risk Function for Estimating the Global Burden of Disease Attributable to Ambient Fine Particulate Matter Exposure. Environ Health Perspect; DOI:10.1289/ehp.1307049
- Smith KR, Bruce N, Balakrishnan K, Adair-Rohani H, Balmes J, Chafe Z, Dherani M, Hosgood DH, Mehta S, Pope D, Rehfuess E, et al. (2014) Millions Dead: How Do We Know and What Does It Mean? Methods Used in the Comparative Risk Assessment of Household Air Pollution. Annu. Rev. Public Health 35: 185-206. doi: 10.1146/annurev-publhealth-032013-182356
GBD 2010 creates a unique platform to compare the magnitude of diseases, injuries, and risk factors across age groups, sexes, countries, regions, and time. For decision-makers, health sector leaders, researchers, and informed citizens, the GBD approach provides an opportunity to compare their countries’ health progress to that of other countries, and to understand the leading causes of health loss that could potentially be avoided, like high blood pressure, smoking, and household air pollution.
HAPIT is a web-based tool to calculate and compare the health benefits attributed to proposed stove and/or fuel intervention programs to reduce exposure to household air pollution (HAP) from use of solid cookfuels in traditional stoves in developing countries. It is tailored to national average conditions in the country where the program is planned and relies on the methods and databases developed as part of the Comparative Risk Assessment (CRA) of HAP, a component of the Global Burden of Disease project (GBD-2010). It includes exposure-response information for each of the major disease categories that have been accepted as being due to particle air pollution exposures including those from HAP as well as 2010 background health, demographic, energy, and economic conditions in the countries for which the program has been designed, which are taken from authoritative international sources. HAPIT can output a consistently formatted PDF report containing all generated graphs and tables for distribution and discussion. Funding for development of HAPIT has come partly from the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.
CHINA
The database contains data abstracted from more than 110 published papers with measurements of air quality in Chinese households, mostly from the Chinese literature previous to 1995. It is organized by pollutant (Particulates, Sulfur Dioxide, Carbon Monoxide, Nitrogen Oxides, Benzo[a]pyrene); fuel type (Coal & Mixed, Gas, Biomass); and location (Urban, Rural).
HOUSEHOLD MEASUREMENTS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
The Global database of household air pollution measurements, commissioned and hosted by WHO and developed by researchers at Sri Ramachandra University, Chennai, India and the University of California at Berkeley, provides an overview of methods and results from 154 studies reporting household air pollution measurements. This database, with measurements from 37 countries, allows for comparisons within or across studies.