EDITORIALS
Where there’s smoke... there’s tuberculosis
Correspondence to:
Dr Stephen Gordon, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Pembroke Place, Liverpool L3 5QA, UK; sbgordon@liverpool.ac.uk
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Recent observations have demonstrated precisely the increased life expectancy associated with clean environmental air in the USA.1 This dramatic health benefit has been achieved at levels of pollution very much lower than those found indoors in underdeveloped countries. Traditional cooking fires using biomass (organic material) fuel are inefficient and the smoke levels measured in poorly ventilated homes are often 100 times that regarded as dangerous in the affluent industrial world. High levels of indoor air pollution have been associated in epidemiological studies with upper and lower respiratory tract acute infections (ALRIs), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer.2 There has been less evidence to support an association of indoor air pollution with biomass fuel use and tuberculosis, and so the report by Kolappan and Subramani (see page 705) in this issue is most welcome.3
Three billion people use biomass fuel globally, almost entirely in areas with high
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Thorax 2009 64: 705-708.[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
This article has been cited by other articles:
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Fullerton, D G, Semple, S, Kalambo, F, Suseno, A, Malamba, R, Henderson, G, Ayres, J G, Gordon, S B
(2009). Biomass fuel use and indoor air pollution in homes in Malawi. Occup. Environ. Med.
66: 777-783
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