Air pollution in Asia poses large health risks and is a major contributor to climate change. The composition of air pollution from different sources affects its impact on climate and possibly health. We enrolled 280 Chinese women >25-years old cooking with wood stoves, and measured their blood pressure, distance to major traffic routes, and 24-hr personal exposure to PM2.5, black carbon (BC), water soluble organic matter (WSOM) and hopanes (motor vehicle emissions) in winter and summer. We used mixed-effects models to estimate associations between air pollutants and blood pressure. Women's mean 24-hr PM2.5 exposure was 88 �g/m3 (range:9-634); their WSOM exposure was considerably higher than BC (mean: 34 vs. 5 �g/m3). A 1-ln(�g/m3) increase in BC had the strongest association with systolic blood pressure (4.3 mmHg; p<0.001), followed by PM2.5 mass and WSOM, with similar effects for diastolic blood pressure . The effect of BC on blood pressure was nearly three times larger in women living near the highway (systolic: 6.2 mmHg, 95% CI: 3.6, 8.9 vs. 2.6 mmHg, 95% CI: 0.1, 5.2), though BC exposures were similar. Mean hopane exposure was higher among women in the village closest (~70m) to the highway compared with women in the village farthest (~550m) from the highway (4.6 vs. 1.1 ng/m3; p<0.001). We found that exposure to BC from combustion emissions is more strongly associated with blood pressure than PM2.5 or WSOM, and that BC's health effect is larger among women co-exposed to wood smoke and motor vehicles.

Black carbon from cookstoves and highway proximity as a risk factor for higher blood pressure in rural China

248th National Meeting (2014)

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