New Telegraph

Cooking with wood could cause lung damage

Researchers in the United States (U.S.) and India have said that advanced imaging with CT scan shows that people who cook with biomass fuels such as wood were at risk of suffering considerable damage to their lungs from breathing in dangerous concentrations of pollutants and bacterial toxins.

The results of their new study would be presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) to be held virtually at the Mc- Cormick Place in Chicago from November 29 to December 5. Approximately three billion people around the world cook with biomass, such as wood or dried brush, reported the ‘Science Daily’ and pollutants from cooking with biomass is a major contributor to the estimated four million deaths a year from household air pollution- related illness.

Study co-author, Abhilash Kizhakke Puliyakote, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, said: “It is important to detect, understand and reverse the early alterations that develop in response to chronicexposurestobiomass fuel emissions.” A multidisciplinary team led by Eric A. Hoffman, PhD, at the University of Iowa, in collaboration with researchers from Periyar Maniammai Institute of Science and Technology, investigated the impact of cookstove pollutants in 23 people cooking with liquefied petroleum gas or wood biomass in Thanjavur, India.

The researchers measured the concentrations of pollutants in homes and then studied the lung function of the individuals, using traditional tests such as spirometry and advanced CT scanning to make quantitative measurements.

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