Personal exposure to household air pollution and lung function in rural Bangladesh: A population-based cross-sectional study.

We assessed whether personal exposure to household air pollution [PM 2.5 and black carbon (BC)] is associated with lung functions (FEV 1 , FVC, and their ratio) in non-smoking adults in rural Bangladesh. We measured personal exposure to PM 2.5 using gravimetric analysis of PM 2.5 mass and BC by reflectance measurement between April 2016 and June 2019. The average 24-hour PM 2.5 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 PM 2.5 resulted in a 0.02 ml reduction in FEV 1 , 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 FEV 1 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.