Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering

CASE STUDY

CASE STUDY

Understanding the Relationships Between Indoor and Outdoor Air Quality, Personal Exposures and Household Characteristics

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CIVE Assistant Professor Ellison Carter is working to understand patterns and determinants of environmental exposures and environmental health disparities. Her work focuses on housing-related environmental exposures, and in particular, the research aim is to understand relationships between indoor and outdoor air quality, personal air pollution and housing characteristics including household energy sources.

In many parts of the world, indoor combustion of solid fuels (e.g. biomass, coal) persists to meet diverse household energy needs. Burning solid fuels indoors leads to high air pollution exposures that are bad for health. The Carter research group is conducting several studies in China to understand household transitions to clean fuels and energy and their impacts on human health and the environment.