Approximately 3 billion individuals, half the worldwide population, are exposed to extremely high concentrations of household air pollution (HAP) due to the burning of biomass fuels on inefficient cookstoves, accounting for 2 million deaths globally per year. However, our understanding of the mechanistic response and relative acute and chronic toxicities of different sources of biomass smoke is limited. The two most prevalent biomass fuels in India are wood and cow dung, and typical 24-h mean particulate matter concentrations in homes that use these fuels are 300-3,000 ug/m. Thus, we investigated pulmonary responses in mice after either acute high-dose (corresponding 3 to 3,125 mg/m) or chronic lower dose (corresponding to 625 3 mg/m) exposures to wood or cow dung PM collected from Indian homes 3 during cooking. Acutely, we observed that wood and cow dung PM elicited neutrophilic inflammation.

Jung-Hyun Kim, Vijendra Ingole , Sarah McCormick , Jesse Negherbon , Jonathan Fallica , Marsha Wills-Karp , Maureen R Horton , Patrick N Breysse , Anurag Agrawal , Sanjay Juvekar , Sundeep S Salvi , and Shyam S Biswal. "Source Of Biomass Cooking Fuel Is A Key Determinant Of The Pulmonary Response To Household Air Particulate Matter." C105. POLLUTION EFFECTS (2013).