Ghana EPA incorporating household air pollution into air quality monitoring platform
With 80% of its population still cooking with solid fuels and inefficient cookstoves, Ghana’s government is taking new steps to better understand the health impacts of household air pollution (HAP).
The Alliance, in partnership with Berkeley Air Monitoring Group, UrbanEmissions.Info and Dr. Ajay Pillarisetti, with funding from the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, has been working with the Ghana Environmental Protection Agency to include HAP in its existing air quality monitoring platform. The first phase of this work kicked off in August, when Ghana EPA hosted a workshop to educate attendees about HAP and to enhance in-field measurement techniques of personal exposure monitoring. More than 50 participants joined from organizations that included the Ghana EPA, Ghana Ministry of Energy, Ghana Atomic Energy Commission, Ghana Health Services, Kenya Ministries of Health and Energy, and research groups across Ghana.
The workshop was then followed by an intensive five-week training for Ghana EPA members, which featured four weeks of field work that included visits to homes throughout greater Accra to determine personal exposures to household air pollution. The data gathered will be used to determine the burden of disease from HAP in Accra, as well as the potential benefits that a suite of household energy interventions could provide. These city-specific results will allow the government to make evidence-based policy decisions for reducing ambient air pollution within the city.