Particulate respiratory dose to Indian women from domestic cooking

Abstract

Particulate mass size distributions were measured during cooking and non-cooking periods in three Indian urban household kitchens with Liquefied Petroleum Gas as fuel. Based on the measured mass size distributions, fraction of particulate deposition in the respiratory system were calculated for a healthy Indian female using a deterministic lung deposition model. Respiratory physiological data of Indian women were collected from the published data. These physiological parameters were incorporated in the model to determine the particulate deposition in the respiratory system. The cooking generated very high concentration of particles 4 to 5 times more than the non-cooking background periods. Particulate size distributions in both cooking and non-cooking periods showed bimodal characteristics. Cooking process generated particles predominantly in accumulation mode (0.1-0.3 mu m) whereas during non-cooking periods particulates are found in coarse mode (1.0-2.0 mu m). Also, during frying process, the particulates were found to have a predominant coarser/ droplet mode 0.7-1.0 mu m. The highest deposition was observed in pulmonary region during cooking periods. The study shows that the daily particulate dose to the urban Indian women from domestic cooking is comparable with the dose resulting from outdoor particulate exposure.