Modelling Clean Cooking and Climate Policy for Future Heart Disease Reduction

Long-term PM _2.5 exposure is a risk factor for cardiovascular mortality. Fossil fuel burning is a large source of PM _2.5 . Here, a global health impact assessment was conducted utilizing 7 future scenarios evaluating strategies to reduce PM _2.5 exposure, including reducing fossil fuel use, air pollution control, adopting cleaner cooking methods and combinations thereof. Under current trends, air quality is projected to improve by 2050, but the absolute attributable burden of ischemic heart disease remains high in many regions. Promoting cleaner cooking is effective in the short term (by 2030) in South and Central America, Asia, and Africa in reducing the health burden. In the long term (by 2050), for most regions, only strategies that simultaneously target ambient and cooking related PM _2.5 resulted in sustained improvements for reducing ischemic heart disease burden. For, North Africa and the Middle East region the population attributable fraction remains high across all scenarios. PM _2.5 exposure remains above the WHO Air Quality Guidelines across all scenarios therefore additional strategies are required to improve air quality.