Your donation contributes to projects around the world focusing on reducing the top global environmental health hazard — household air pollution from use of simple biomass fuels for cooking, which is a special risk for women and children and estimated to result in 3.9 million premature deaths annually in poor countries.
Contributions will be used to provide support to students at UC Berkeley and elsewhere to conduct field research and promote solutions to this problem globally.
To make a donation to the “Kirk R. Smith Research Group”, please e-mail or call Eileen Pearl (510-643-6382). More information on donation options is available here.
The Kirk Smith Research Group is the oldest and largest in the world conducting research at the intersections of health, pollution, and climate change related to household energy use. The group currently has active study sites in India, Kenya, Malawi, Paraguay, and Nepal and is analyzing results from recently finished field studies in China, Laos, Mexico, and Mongolia. A few of many examples of research in the household air pollution realm are:
· In Nepal, we are examining the relationship of household air pollution with tuberculosis and child pneumonia and helping measuring the emissions of black carbon and other climate-changing pollutants from households that might threaten the Himalayan glaciers.
· The group’s work in India includes measuring village-level air pollution due to household sources and estimating the contribution to national outdoor air pollution levels.
· Our research activities also assess aspects of the India national Give It Up campaign to provide 50 million poor households with LPG stoves in conjunction with the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. This is an unprecedented public health intervention of massive scale in its potential reduction of household air pollution and its health impacts.
· In India, the group is also designing innovative methods to promote and measure usage of LPG among poor pregnant women, one of the most vulnerable groups.
· We are working with the Indian Ministry of Health to develop new modes of air pollution monitoring and control based on health impacts rather than environmental management.
· The group is a pioneer in the development of small portable microchip-based devices to inexpensively and objectively monitor household air pollution and related parameter including air exchange rate, time activity, and stove use in remote locations.
All studies conducted by our research group include UC Berkeley students and colleagues and students in each of the countries.
Work from the group has been featured in a wide array of popular media and scientific journals, including The New Yorker, Science, Environmental Health Perspectives, New Scientist, and the Lancet.
Dr. Smith is Professor of Global Environmental Health in the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the National Academies of Science. He is 2009 recipient of the Heinz Award in the Environment and in 2012 was awarded the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement..