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Artificial Intelligence for Air Quality and Control Systems
Published in Satya Prakash Maurya, Akhilesh Kumar Yadav, Ramesh Singh, Modeling and Simulation of Environmental Systems, 2023
Divya Patel, Mridu Kulwant, Saba Shirin, Ankit Kumar, Mohammad Aurangzeb Ansari, Akhilesh Kumar Yadav
Air pollution kills an estimated 7 million people worldwide every year. WHO data shows that 9 out of 10 people breathe air that exceeds WHO guideline limits containing high levels of pollutants with low- and middle-income countries suffering from the highest exposures (WHO, 2018). According to recent reports, nearly 3 billion people are exposed to high levels of health-damaging pollutants each and every day due to the lack of access to clean fuel and technologies for cooking, especially in rural areas. Such chronic exposure to household air pollution is the cause of nearly 4 million deaths annually from non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and cancer, as well as pneumonia. Insufficient and polluting household energy use is a health risk shared by all populations but a particularly important source of disease in women, children, and infants. Urgent action is needed to scale up access to clean cooking solutions to achieve sustainable development goals on health, gender equality, and climate, among others, and ultimately to minimize the future negative effects of the climate crisis thereby facilitating the effective enjoyment of the human right to health (WHO, 2021).
Indoor Air Quality and Green Building: Nexus for Sustainable Development
Published in Nitin Kumar Singh, Siddhartha Pandey, Himanshu Sharma, Sunkulp Goel, Green Innovation, Sustainable Development, and Circular Economy, 2020
Soham Desai, Twinkle Kathiriya, Abhishek Gupta, Veerendra Sahu, Manish Yadav, Tushali Jagwani
According to studies by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), an average adult spends 93% of their time on indoor activities. An adult can take 20–22 thousand breaths per day, i.e. more than 10 m3 of air, which is generally polluted and can pose a high threat to health. These health effects can be acute and chronic depending on exposure to pollutants. Immediate effects can be seen when concentrations are higher, whereas a long and continuous exposure to concentrations can be harmful in the long run. The quality of indoor air is affected by the presence of gases like carbon monoxide, ozone, radon, volatile organic carbons (VOCs) and fibers, along with particulate matter, organic and inorganic matter, biological components, etc. Sometimes these pollutants infiltrate from ambient air to the indoor environment resulting in a change in their concentration. Apart from the workplace indoor air environment, household air pollution is also kept under consideration where the effects are different, observed through biomass emissions, cooking gas emissions and dampness following household activities (Chen et al., 2015). When considering a green building, the environment it creates, the emissions or sink that it becomes has a lot to do with its inner environment. The ventilation rate is another factor to keep the indoor air monitored in a green building.
Urban Air Quality
Published in Larry E. Erickson, Gary Brase, Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Improving Air Quality, 2019
The main reason to replace solid fuels with gas or electricity for cooking is the health impacts of the air pollution from solid fuels. More than 3 million people die from household air pollution each year, and combustion gases from burning solid fuels are the main source of pollutants (Goldemberg et al., 2018; Baklanov et al., 2016). The concept of changing from cooking with solid fuel to cooking with electricity – particularly where the electricity is generated without combustion – is included as one aspect of sustainable urban development by Stewart et al. (2018). With the lower cost of solar-generated electricity, the practicality of using off-grid solar energy to power electric cooking in rural areas where the regular electricity grid is not available is becoming possible.
Effects of operational mode on particle size and number emissions from a biomass gasifier cookstove
Published in Aerosol Science and Technology, 2018
Jessica Tryner, John Volckens, Anthony J. Marchese
Household air pollution (HAP) and ambient particulate matter (PM) air pollution are each estimated to cause 2.9 million deaths annually (Forouzanfar et al. 2015). A major source of household air pollution is combustion of solid fuels (e.g., wood, agricultural residues, dung, charcoal, or coal), and approximately 2.8 billion people rely on this practice worldwide (Bonjour et al. 2013). Household solid fuel combustion also contributes to ambient air pollution (Smith et al. 1994). Targets for reducing emissions of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) from solid-fuel stoves have been established with the goal of reducing the global burden of disease from PM (“ISO IWA 11:2012” 2012; World Health Organization 2014). Exclusive reliance on mass-based targets for particulate emissions from other combustion sources, such as diesel engines, has been criticized (Kittelson 1998), in part because ultrafine particles (i.e., particles with d < 100 nm), which contribute very little mass to PM2.5, may be more detrimental to human health than larger particles (Oberdörster 2000; Health Effects Institute 2013). Similarly, some researchers have expressed concern that efforts to reduce the health risks associated with HAP may be hindered if “improved” biomass cookstoves are introduced that emit lower levels of PM mass but higher levels of ultrafine particles (Just et al. 2013; Rapp et al. 2016).
Variations in perinatal mortality associated with different polluting fuel types and kitchen location in Bangladesh
Published in International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, 2018
Monjura Khatun Nisha, Ashraful Alam, Camille Raynes-Greenow
Household air pollution is the third leading health risk for global mortality and the most important environmental health risk in the world, accounting for 4.3 million deaths every year [1–3]. Combustion from polluting fuels such as coal, charcoal, wood, and animal dung is the main contributor to household air pollution [4]. Globally, around 41% of households rely on polluting fuels as their primary cooking fuel [5]. The proportion is even higher in South Asia where ~61% of households depend on polluting fuels for cooking which ranked household air pollution as the number one health risk in South Asia [1]. In addition, these fuels are used indoors or in partly enclosed cooking areas which, along with inefficient stoves, result in a very high level of air pollution [6]. These emissions are known to include numerous noxious pollutants, including particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and carcinogenic organic air pollutants [6,7]. These are the same pollutants in ambient air and environmental tobacco smoke and are associated with several adverse pregnancy outcomes such as stillbirth, early neonatal mortality, and low birthweight [8]. Several studies have attributed maternal exposure to cooking fuel with adverse perinatal outcomes [8–16]. Most of these studies have focused on low birthweight and preterm birth with few assessing the impact on stillbirth [8–16]. One recent systematic review and meta-analysis conducted by Amegah et al. reported an increased risk of stillbirth with polluting fuels, and the summary effect estimate was 1.29 (95% CI: 1.18–1.41) [17], which is slightly lower than the previous estimates in Pope et al.’s systematic review (odds ratio [OR]: 1.51, 95% CI: 1.23–1.85) [12]. These systematic reviews consisted of the same four studies to assess the role of polluting fuels for stillbirth [8,9,16,18], with an additional study included in the Amegah et al.'s systematic review [10]; of the included studies, two used an unclear definition of stillbirth with a small sample size [16,18] and one did not adequately adjust for confounders [18]. Further, there was considerable variability in exposure assessment, which was noted as a major limitation of these studies [12,17]. The association for early neonatal mortality is also not clearly understood from these studies.