We assessed whether personal exposure to household air pollution [PM2.5 and black carbon (BC)] is associated with lung functions (FEV1, FVC, and their ratio) in non-smoking adults in rural Bangladesh. We measured personal exposure to PM2.5 using gravimetric analysis of PM2.5 mass and BC by reflectance measurement between April 2016 and June 2019. The average 24-hour PM2.5 and BC concentration was 141.0μgm-3 and 13.8μgm-3 for females, and 91.7 μgm-3 and 10.1 μgm-3 for males, respectively. A 1 μgm-3 increase in PM2.5 resulted in a 0.02 ml reduction in FEV1, 0.43 ml reduction in FVC, and 0.004% reduction in FEV1/FVC. We also found a similar inverse relationship between BC and lung functions (9.6 ml decrease in FEV1 and 18.5 ml decrease in FVC per 1μgm-3 increase in BC). A higher proportion of non-smoking biomass fuel users (50.1% of the females and 46.7% of the males) had restrictive patterns of lung function abnormalities, which need further exploration.
Keywords: Household air pollution; black carbon; lung function; particulate matter; personal exposure; spirometry.