Estimating the Number of Vulnerable People in the United States Exposed to Residential Wood Smoke

Center for Environmental Health Sciences, University of Montana, Missoula, Montana, USA About This Article open E-mail: curtis.noonan@umontana.edu The authors’ research related to residential biomass combustion is supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (grants 1R01ES022583, 1R01ES022649, 1R01ES016336). The authors declare they have no actual or potential competing financial interests. Published: 1 February 2015 PDF Version (111 KB) Rogalsky et al. (2014) recently estimated the number of homes and individuals at risk of adverse health effects from exposure to emissions from residential wood combustion in the United States. We appreciate the importance of this topic, particularly to rural and underserved communities. We also understand the authors’ emphasis on low-income individuals because this population generally has more difficulty accessing health care services and fewer resources available to improve indoor air quality. However, several factors suggest that the indication of 500,000–600,000 low-income persons exposed to household air pollution (HAP) from the burning of solid fuels may be a very conservative estimate, substantially underestimating the public health importance of residential wood combustion. First, the estimate of Rogalsky et al. (2014) was limited by their use of the census-based figure of 2.8 million homes using wood as a primary heating fuel. The U.S. Energy Information Agency (2012) noted that a...
Source: EHP Research - Category: Environmental Health Authors: Tags: Correspondence February 2015 Source Type: research