You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
PostScript
Letters to the Editor
Acute exposure to biomass smoke causes oxygen desaturation in adult women
  1. Om P Kurmi1,
  2. Santosh Gaihre2,
  3. Sean Semple2,
  4. Jon G Ayres1
  1. 1Institute of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, School of Health and Population Sciences, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, UK
  2. 2Scottish Centre for Indoor Air, Population Health Sciences, Division of Applied Health Sciences, School of Medicine, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK
  1. Correspondence to Om Kurmi, Institute of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, School of Health and Population Sciences, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK; o.kurmi{at}bham.ac.uk

https://doi.org/10.1136/thx.2010.144717

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Long-term exposure to biomass fuel smoke indoors is causally associated with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)1 but the effect of acute exposures has not been studied. Should acute effects occur, this might increase the risk of an exacerbation of pre-existing lung disease. We studied acute changes in lung function and oxygen saturation in individuals exposed regularly to biomass smoke in Nepal.

    Spirometry (EasyOne spirometer using American Thoracic Society (ATS) criteria) and oxygen saturation data were collected from 26, randomly selected, life-long non-smoking women (mean±SD age 38.0±11.7 years) before and after cooking (morning or evening). Smoke concentrations were measured using a DustTrak (TSI, Shoreview, Minnesota, USA) during cooking events and expressed as PM2.5 (particulate matter of <2.5 μm in diameter).2

    Geometric …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Funding University of Birmingham.

    • Competing interests None.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.