Fuel combustion, air pollution exposure, and health: The situation in developing countries

There are a number of recent studies of air pollution in developing-country cities, each of necessity relying heavily on the one available source of comparative international ambient monitoring data, Global Environment Monitoring System (GEMS). In this review, therefore, rather than simply reproduce the GEMS data. The author chose to examine developing-country air pollution from the standpoint of a useful analysis technique that has been under development in recent years: Basically the review is composed of four parts: (1) a brief description of the historical and current relationship between energy use and air pollution; (2) an explanation of the idea of exposure assessment and the power that it can bring to analyses of the health impacts of air pollution; (3) focusing on developing countries, a global exposure assessment, combining demographic data with GEMS outdoor data and less-developed country (LDC) indoor air-monitoring studies; (4) a review of the health effects literature relevant to the micro-environments found to harbor the largest human exposures. 104 refs