Exposure to high concentrations of particulate matter (PM) is associated with a number of adverse health effects. However, it is unclear which aspects of PM are most hazardous, and a better understanding of particle sizes and personal exposure is needed. We characterized particle size distribution (PSD) from biomass-related pollution and assessed total and regional lung-deposited doses using multiple-path deposition modeling. Gravimetric measurements of kitchen and personal PM2.5 (<2.5 µm in size) exposures were collected in 180 households in rural Puno, Peru. Direct-reading measurements of number concentrations were collected in a subset of 20 kitchens for particles 0.3-25 µm, and the continuous PSD was derived using a nonlinear least-squares method. Mean daily PM2.5 kitchen concentration and personal exposure was 1205 ± 942 µg/m3 and 115 ± 167 µg/m3 , respectively, and the mean mass concentration consisted of a primary accumulation mode at 0.21 µm and a secondary coarse mode at 3.17 µm. Mean daily lung-deposited surface area (LDSA) and LDSA during cooking were 1009.6 ± 1469.8 µm2 /cm3 and 10,552.5 ± 8261.6 µm2 /cm3 , respectively. This study presents unique data regarding lung deposition of biomass smoke that could serve as a reference for future studies and provides a novel, more biologically relevant metric for exposure-response analysis compared to traditional size-based metrics.
Keywords: biomass fuels; cookstoves; environmental exposure; indoor air pollution; lung deposition; particle size distribution.
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