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. 2024 Oct 22:23:100501.
doi: 10.1016/j.ese.2024.100501. eCollection 2025 Jan.

Mitigating household air pollution exposure through kitchen renovation

Yatai Men  1 , Ke Jiang  1 , Yaoji Li  1 , Ran Xing  1 , Zhihan Luo  1 , Tianyao Huang  1 , Shuyu Ou'yang  1 , Wei Du  2   3 , Yuanchen Chen  4 , Guofeng Shen  1   3   5
Affiliations

Mitigating household air pollution exposure through kitchen renovation

Yatai Men et al. Environ Sci Ecotechnol. .

Abstract

Globally, over three billion people rely on traditional solid fuels for cooking and heating, leading to significant household air pollution and critical public health concerns. While transitioning to clean energy carriers faces challenges of accessibility and affordability-especially among low-income, rural populations-alternative strategies like kitchen layout modifications and the use of ventilation fans may effectively reduce exposure to pollutants. Here, we analyze factors influencing the adoption of separated kitchens and mechanical ventilation and evaluate changes in human exposure to PM2.5 under different kitchen renovation scenarios by conducting a nationwide survey of household kitchen characteristics in rural China. We found that although 82% of rural households have kitchens separated from other rooms, only 34% use mechanical ventilation. The adoption of ventilation fans is significantly influenced by income and education levels. We estimate that widespread implementation of ventilation fans and separated kitchen designs could prevent approximately 67400 premature deaths annually, resulting in a health benefit of about USD 19 billion per year-substantially exceeding the costs involved. These findings suggest that cost-effective kitchen renovations offer enormous potential for substantial health benefits and present a practical solution compared to the challenges of clean energy transitions in rural areas.

Keywords: Health benefits; Household air pollution; Mechanical ventilation; Separating kitchen.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Image 1
Graphical abstract
Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Proportion of homes with different household characteristics. a, Kitchens separated from other indoor spaces. b, Kitchens equipped with ventilation fans. c, A correlation between the proportion of homes with a separated kitchen and the presence of a ventilation fan in the kitchen at the county level. The frequency distribution charts and curves are also shown in panel c for the proportion of separated kitchen (right) and mechanical ventilation (top).
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Proportion of homes by province and region (a) and nationwide (b) based on the presence of separate kitchens and the use of mechanical ventilation. The symbols “+” and “−” indicate the presence or absence of mechanical ventilation/separated kitchens, respectively.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Correlation analysis between kitchen characteristics (mechanical ventilation and separated kitchens in the present study) and some influencing factors, including socioeconomic and natural geographical factors. The heatmap on the left illustrates the correlation between the respective factors, while the diagonal bar graphs display the distribution of each factor. The numerical values on the right are the corresponding correlation coefficients between those factors.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Population-weighted PM2.5 exposure levels for the rural population. a, Exposure levels for households using different energies for cooking. The symbols “+” and “−” indicate the presence or absence of mechanical ventilation/separated kitchens, respectively. b, Scatter plot of the proportion of homes with mechanical ventilation and separated kitchens in each city, along with the corresponding exposure levels denoted by point colors.
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Health benefits of installing ventilation fans and constructing a separate kitchen: population-weighted exposure levels (a), premature mortality (b), and economic losses (c) in different scenarios.
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