Research on Emissions, Air quality, Climate, and Cooking Technologies in Northern Ghana (REACCTING): study rationale and protocol

Abstract

BackgroundCooking over open fires using solid fuels is both common practice throughout much of the world and widely recognized to contribute to human health, environmental, and social problems. The public health burden of household air pollution includes an estimated four million premature deaths each year. To be effective and generate useful insight into potential solutions, cookstove intervention studies must select cooking technologies that are appropriate for local socioeconomic conditions and cooking culture, and include interdisciplinary measurement strategies along a continuum of outcomes.Methods/DesignREACCTING (Research on Emissions, Air quality, Climate, and Cooking Technologies in Northern Ghana) is an ongoing interdisciplinary randomized cookstove intervention study in the Kassena-Nankana District of Northern Ghana. The study tests two types of biomass burning stoves that have the potential to meet local cooking needs and represent different “rungs” in the cookstove technology ladder: a locally-made low-tech rocket stove and the imported, highly efficient Philips gasifier stove. Intervention households were randomized into four different groups, three of which received different combinations of two improved stoves, while the fourth group serves as a control for the duration of the study. Diverse measurements assess different points along the causal chain linking the intervention to final outcomes of interest. We assess stove use and cooking behavior, cooking emissions, household air pollution and personal exposure, health burden, and local to regional air quality. Integrated analysis and modeling will tackle a range of interdisciplinary science questions, including examining ambient exposures among the regional population, assessing how those exposures might change with different technologies and behaviors, and estimating the comparative impact of local behavior and technological changes versus regional climate variability and change on local air quality and health outcomes.DiscussionREACCTING is well-poised to generate useful data on the impact of a cookstove intervention on a wide range of outcomes. By comparing different technologies side by side and employing an interdisciplinary approach to study this issue from multiple perspectives, this study may help to inform future efforts to improve health and quality of life for populations currently relying on open fires for their cooking needs.

Rural–urban differences in cooking practices and exposures in Northern Ghana

“…The REACCTING study took place in the Kassena-Nankana (K-N) districts of the Upper East Region (figure 1) in Northern Ghana from November 2013 through January 2016. Full details of the REACCTING protocols and measurements are described elsewhere [3,4] as are details about the demographics of the study region [5]. The main focus of this study was an intervention, centered on the rural areas of the district where wood is the primary cooking fuel, designed to test the adoption, acceptance, and impacts of two improved cookstoves: a locally-made rocket stove (Gyapa) and a Philips HD4012 LS gasifier stove (Philips).…”

“…During the study period, ambient pollutant concentrations were measured at the Navrongo Health Research Center (NHRC), five health centers located across the K-N districts, and in the middle of the primary market place in the Navrongo town center (figure 1). These measurements were made with G-Pod air quality monitors ( [3,6], mobilesensing technology.com), configured to measure CO with an electrochemical sensor (CO-B4, Alphasense, Essex, UK). Ambient particulate matter with aerodynamic diameters less than 2.5 mm (PM 2.5 ) samples were collected on quartz filters at the NHRC, and only the carbonaceous component was quantified following the methods described by Piedrahita et al [6].…”

“…Here, we take advantage of results from a multidisciplinary study in northern Ghana, the Research of Emissions, Air Quality, Climate, and Cooking Technologies In Northern Ghana (REACCTING) study [3], to examine characteristics of urban and rural households and how they may impact the effectiveness of improved stove interventions. The REACCTING study involved a randomized intervention conducted with 200 rural households, as well as an observational (non-intervention) cohort of 48 urban households.…”

Exposures to Carbon Monoxide in a Cookstove Intervention in Northern Ghana

“…Building on prior work, this paper seeks to characterize CO exposures, their determinants across households and across time, and their association with PM 2.5 exposures in the context of a cookstove intervention study in Northern Ghana. The REACCTING study (research of emissions, air quality, climate, and cooking technologies in Northern Ghana) was a 200 household cookstove intervention in the Kassena-Nankana districts of Ghana's Upper East region from November 2013 to December 2015 [11]. The 200 study households were divided into four groups, with one group given two locally made Gyapa rocket stoves, one group given two Philips HD4012 LS forced draft stoves, one group given one of each intervention stove, and the last group serving as control until the end of the study, when they were given their choice of two stoves.…”

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“…Annually, between 3.3 and 4.3 million people prematurely die due to certain diseases relating to the pollution of air in households, as a result of cooking meals using solid fuel (Dickinson et al, 2015;Egondi et al, 2013;Simon et al, 2014; ***WHO, no.292, 2014). The biomass as fuel is largely recognized as an important source of pollution that affects human health, air quality at the local and regional level, and also has an impact on climate changes at the global level.…”