The Cooking and Pneumonia Study (CAPS) in Malawi: A Cross-Sectional Assessment of Carbon Monoxide Exposure and Carboxyhemoglobin Levels in Children under 5 Years Old

Deborah Havens, Duolao Wang, Jonathan Grigg, Stephen B. Gordon, John Balmes and Kevin Mortimer
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Deborah Havens: Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool L3 5QA, UK
Duolao Wang: Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool L3 5QA, UK
Jonathan Grigg: Centre for Genomics and Child Health, Queen Mary University of London, London E1 2AT, UK
Stephen B. Gordon: Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust, Blantyre, Malawi
John Balmes: Division of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-7360, USA
Kevin Mortimer: Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool L3 5QA, UK

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 9, 1-13

Abstract: Household air pollution is estimated to cause half a million deaths from pneumonia in children worldwide. The Cooking and Pneumonia Study (CAPS) was conducted to determine whether the use of cleaner-burning biomass-fueled cookstoves would reduce household air pollution and thereby the incidence of pneumonia in young children in rural Malawi. Here we report a cross-sectional assessment of carbon monoxide (CO) exposure and carboxyhemoglobin (COHgB) levels at recruitment to CAPS. Mean (SD; range) 48-h CO exposure of 1928 participating children was 0.90 (2.3; 0–49) ppm and mean (SD; range) COHgB level was 5.8% (3.3; 0–20.3). Higher mean CO and COHgB levels were associated with location (Chikhwawa versus Chilumba) (OR 3.55 (1.73–7.26)); (OR 2.77 (1.08–7.08)). Correlation between mean CO and COHgB was poor (Spearman’s ρ = 0.09, p < 0.001). The finding of high COHgB levels in young children in rural Malawi that are at levels at which adverse neurodevelopmental and cognitive effects occur is of concern. Effective approaches for reducing exposure to CO and other constituents of air pollution in rural sub-Saharan African settings are urgently needed.

Keywords: child health; environmental monitoring; personal exposure; CAPS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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