Human Exposure, Health and Societal Issues in Rural New Hampshire Associated with Wood and Pellet Stoves as Home Heating Sources

• Brian Jackson, Research Professor, Earth Sciences Dept. 
• Laura Paulin, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth
• Nora Travis, Keene State College
• Maragaret Shufflebarger, Student, Dartmouth College

Human Exposure, Health and Societal Issues in Rural New Hampshire Associated with Wood and Pellet Stoves as Home Heating Sources

Air pollution is a global health problem resulting from increased particulate matter (PM) and gaseous emissions in the atmosphere. It is a health issue for rural populations too, where home heating renewable energy sources such as wood are a significant source of PM. Wood burning increases indoor concentration of fine (<2.5 μm) PM and ultrafine exposure PM (~0.1 μm), which play an important role in lung inflammation and adverse respiratory outcomes. Both the size of the particle and its chemical constituents have been linked to exacerbation of respiratory and cardiovascular disease associated with particulate air pollution. This proposal will enable a collaboration between investigators from Dartmouth College, Dartmouth Medical School and Keene State College to measure and characterize indoor and outdoor PM in a small cohort (n = 10) of Keene volunteers using either wood or pellet stoves
or oil or propane heating in their homes. The project will provide cross-disciplinary training for students from Dartmouth and Keene State, and will engage the community and citizen scientists in Keene leveraging the existing community network established by co-investigator Nora Traviss. The project will provide valuable preliminary data and measuring equipment to support future studies and larger proposal submissions.