Impacts of Household Sources on Air Pollution at Village and Regional Scales in India

Abstract. Approximately 3 billion people worldwide cook with solid fuels, such as wood, charcoal, and agricultural residues. These fuels are often combusted in inefficient cookstoves, producing carbonaceous emissions. Between 2.6 and 3.8 million premature deaths occur as a result to exposure to fine particulate matter from the resulting household air pollution (Health Effects Institute, 2018a; World Health Organization, 2018). Household air pollution also contributes to ambient air pollution; the magnitude of this contribution is uncertain. Here, we simulate the distribution of the two major health-damaging outdoor air pollution species (PM2.5 and O3) using state-of-the-science emissions databases and atmospheric chemical transport models to estimate the impact of household combustion on ambient air quality in India. The present study focuses on New Delhi and the SOMAARTH Demographic, Development, and Environmental Surveillance Site (DDESS) in the Palwal District of Haryana, located about 80 km south of New Delhi. The DDESS covers an approximate population of 200 000 within 52 villages. The emissions inventory used in the present study was prepared based on a national inventory in India (Sharma et al., 2015, 2016), an updated residential sector inventory prepared at the University of Illinois, updated cookstove emissions factors from Fleming et al. (2018b), and PM2.5 speciation from cooking fires from Jayarathne et al. (2018). Simulation of regional air quality was carried out using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Community Multiscale Air Quality modeling system (CMAQ), in conjunction with the Weather Research and Forecasting modeling system (WRF) to simulate the meteorological inputs for CMAQ, and the global chemical transport model GEOS-Chem to generate concentrations on the boundary of the computational domain. Comparisons between observed and simulated O3 and PM2.5 levels are carried out to assess overall airborne levels and to estimate the contribution of household cooking emissions. Observed and predicted ozone levels over New Delhi during September 2015, December 2015, and September 2016 routinely exceeded 150 μg m−3, as compared with the 8-hour Indian standard of 100 μg m−3, and, on occasion, exceeded 200 μg m−3. PM2.5 levels are predicted over the SOMAARTH headquarters (September 2015 and September 2016), Bajada Pahari (a village in the surveillance site, September 2015, December 2015, and September 2016), and New Delhi (September 2015, December 2015, and September 2016). Predicted levels vary depending on the time of year but, on the whole, tend to be somewhat less than those observed. The predicted fractional impact of residential emissions on PM2.5 levels varies from about 0.30 in SOMAARTH HQ and Bajada Pahari to about 0.10 in New Delhi. Predicted levels of secondary organic PM2.5 during the periods studied at the three locations averaged about 5 μg m−3, representing approximately 10 % of total PM2.5 levels, accentuating the dominant role played by primary carbonaceous emissions in all three locations.