Household Use of Solid Fuels 3. Studies of Cancer in Experimental Animals

A series of animal and human studies of cancer were begun in China in the 1980s due to the generally high concentrations of air pollution from burning coal for fuel. Coal was widely used in China; in fact, in Xuan Wei County, Yunnan Province, mortality from lung cancer is among the highest in China and could not be accounted for by tobacco or occupational exposures. The emissions from smoky coal that were collected indoors in homes where it was used for cooking and heating without chimney ventilation contained a large proportion of submicron particles with a high concentration of PAHs. These studies evaluated the carcinogenicity of emissions from several types of coal (e.g. smoky coal and smokeless coal), wood smoke and, in several studies, particles from different cities in China were compared (e.g. Xuan Wei, Beijing and Tai Yuan) (Mumford et al., 1987).