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Monitoring of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons emitted from kerosene fuel burning and assessment of health risks among women in selected rural and urban households of South India

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Abstract

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are well-known hazardous substances; nevertheless, research on their exposure and health concerns associated with kerosene fuel emissions is limited. In this study, PAH (combined gaseous and particle phase) monitoring was carried out in the kitchen and living room in selected households. Personal exposure and cooking time monitoring were also carried out, simultaneously. The study's findings revealed that BaP, BA, BbF, and Nap were the most prevalent PAHs in both the summer and winter seasons, regardless of urban or rural households. The estimated values of average incremental lifetime cancer risks were found to be greater than the USEPA level, i.e., 1 × 10–6, in both urban and rural households, regardless of seasonal fluctuation. In both seasons, the non-carcinogenic risk for developmental and reproductive effects was higher in rural women than in urban women, and in case of developmental risk it showed greater than unity (rural: 1.11 and urban 1.03) in the winter season. On the other hand, Monte Carlo simulation model revealed that concentrations of PAHs (97.1% and 97.5%) and exposure duration (51.7% and 56.7%) were the most sensitive factors contributed for health risk estimations for urban and rural area in both seasons, respectively. Furthermore, the results clearly showed that women who were using kerosene for cooking were at a greater risk of acquiring both carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic health consequences from PAH exposure from kerosene cookstoves. It was recommended that they should utilize clean fuel, either by using LPG under the PMUY scheme or by using electricity/solar power to reduce health risks for better health.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Govt. of India and all the faculties and non-teaching staff of the Department of Environmental Health Engineering, Faculty of Public Health, Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research (DU), Chennai, India, for their unconditional help and moral support and providing necessary infrastructure for conducting the research.

Funding

The authors acknowledge the funding of this study by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) (Research Project No.: 5/8/4–20(ENV)/2015-NCD-I), Govt. of India.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Health Engineering, Faculty of Public Health, Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research (DU), Chennai, Tamil Nadu, 600116, India

    Krishnendu Mukhopadhyay, Deep Chakraborty, Srinivasan Natarajan, Sankar Sambandam & Kalpana Balakrishnan

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  1. Krishnendu Mukhopadhyay
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  2. Deep Chakraborty
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  3. Srinivasan Natarajan
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  4. Sankar Sambandam
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  5. Kalpana Balakrishnan
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Contributions

KM was involved in conceptualization and methodology, supervised the investigation, writing—review and editing of the manuscript; Deep Chakraborty wrote the manuscript, executed all the data analysis and modeling, field investigation, laboratory analysis, visualization, review and editing; SN performed field investigation and laboratory analysis; SS and KB did investigation and review

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Correspondence to Krishnendu Mukhopadhyay.

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Mukhopadhyay, K., Chakraborty, D., Natarajan, S. et al. Monitoring of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons emitted from kerosene fuel burning and assessment of health risks among women in selected rural and urban households of South India. Environ Geochem Health 45, 1445–1459 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-022-01276-y

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