Research on Emissions, Air Quality, Climate and Cooking Technologies in Northern Ghana

Research on Emissions, Air Quality, Climate and Cooking Technologies in Northern Ghana

REACCTING (Research on Emissions, Air quality, Climate, and Cooking Technologies in Northern Ghana) is an interdisciplinary randomized cookstove intervention study in the Kassena-Nankana District of Northern Ghana. The study tests two types of biomass burning stoves that have the potential to meet local cooking needs and represent different "rungs" in the cookstove technology ladder: a locally-made, low-tech Gyapa rocket stove and the imported, highly efficient Philips gasifier stove. Intervention households were randomized into four different groups, three of which received different combinations of two improved stoves, while the fourth group serves as a control for the duration of the study. Diverse measurements assess different points along the causal chain linking the intervention to final outcomes of interest. The investigators assess stove use and cooking behavior, cooking emissions, household air pollution and personal exposure, health burden, and local to regional air quality. Integrated analysis and modeling will tackle a range of interdisciplinary science questions, including examining ambient exposures among the regional population, assessing how those exposures might change with different technologies and behaviors, and estimating the comparative impact of local behavior and technological changes versus regional climate variability and change on local air quality and health outcomes.

Inclusion

Individual Participants:

• Classified as "rural"
• Uses biofuel as main cooking fuel source (firewood, animal waste, crop residue/sawdust)
• Uses borehole as main water source (to facilitate social network analysis linking household's knowledge and attitudes toward stoves to experience of social contacts);
• Does not have electricity (to permit possible addition of lighting intervention at a later date);
• Has a woman in household aged 18-55 and at least one child under five (since women and children are the most vulnerable to cookstove smoke and are thus the main focus of our health measures).

Clusters:

• No more than 25% classified as urban
• Accessible year-round (determined by field staff)
• Having at least 10 eligible households (in line with the participant criteria above)

Exclusion:

• Household could not be located
• Household declined to participate