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Background/Aim: Household heating using wood stoves is common practice in many rural areas of the United States (US) and can lead to high concentrations of indoor fine particulate matter (PM_2.5); yet there is limited research on household and behavioral factors that contribute to PM_2.5 levels in such homes. Our aims were to characterize PM_2.5 concentrations, evaluate household and stove-use characteristics that impact PM_2.5, and assess the feasibility of interventions to lower PM_2.5 in rural US homes that used wood stoves for heating.
Methods: KidsAIR was a three-arm post-only randomized trial in wood stove households from three study areas. We measured indoor concentrations of PM_2.5 over a 6-day sampling period during the winter and assessed household and stove-use characteristics. As the two intervention arms (education and air-filtration) were designed to impact PM_2.5 concentrations, we focused these analyses on homes in the control arm (no intervention, n=93).
Results: In preliminary analyses, the mean indoor PM_2.5 concentration across all control homes was 28 µg/m³ (standard deviation [sd]=68), with higher concentrations in Alaska sites (47 µg/m³, sd=95, n=10) than Navajo Nation (NN) or Montana sites (29 µg/m³, sd=76, n=23; 25 µg/m³, sd=59, n=60). Stoves were often over 5 years old (54%) and of poor quality. More participants in NN (35%) reported heavy burning during PM_2.5 measurement than Alaska (10%) or Montana (12%), and more participants in Alaska (70%) and NN (83%) burned wood <3 months after collection than in Montana (25%). Mean wood moisture content was lower in NN (6%) than Alaska (14%) and Montana (13%).
Conclusions: We observed poor stove quality, inconsistent burn practices, and moderately high PM_2.5 concentrations inside rural US homes that heated with wood stoves. Our findings highlight the need for, and the complex nature of, culturally- and regionally-appropriate interventions to reduce indoor air pollution in rural wood-burning homes.