Exploring Smoke: An ethnographic study of air pollution in rural Malawi
| العنوان: | Exploring Smoke: An ethnographic study of air pollution in rural Malawi |
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| المؤلفون: | Henry Sambakunsi, Martha Chinouya, Moses Kumwenda, Kevin Mortimer, Jamie Rylance, Sepeedeh Saleh, Ben Morton |
| المصدر: | BMJ Global Health, Vol 6, Iss 6 (2021) BMJ Global Health |
| بيانات النشر: | BMJ Group, 2021. |
| سنة النشر: | 2021 |
| مصطلحات موضوعية: | Malawi, Medicine (General), medicine.medical_specialty, media_common.quotation_subject, prevention strategies, qualitative study, Air pollution, environmental health, Context (language use), wa_395, wa_750a, Infectious and parasitic diseases, RC109-216, 010501 environmental sciences, medicine.disease_cause, 01 natural sciences, Scarcity, 03 medical and health sciences, R5-920, 0302 clinical medicine, Precarity, Air Pollution, Smoke, Environmental health, 11. Sustainability, medicine, Humans, 030212 general & internal medicine, Anthropology, Cultural, Original Research, 0105 earth and related environmental sciences, media_common, 2. Zero hunger, Health Policy, Public health, 1. No poverty, Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health, Citizen journalism, Structural violence, 3. Good health, Geography, 13. Climate action, Air Pollution, Indoor, epidemiology, public Health, Qualitative research |
| الوصف: | Air pollution adversely affects human health, and the climate crisis intensifies the global imperative for action. Low- and Middle- Income Countries (LMIC) suffer particularly high attributable disease burdens. In rural low-resource settings these are linked to cooking using biomass. Proposed biomedical solutions to air pollution typically involve ‘improved cooking technologies’, often introduced by high income country research teams.\ud \ud This ethnography, set in a rural Malawian village, aimed to understand air pollution within its social and environmental context. The results provide a multifaceted account through immersive participant observations with concurrent air quality monitoring, interviews, and participatory workshops. Data included quantitative measures of individuals’ air pollution exposures paired with activity, qualitative insights into how smoke is experienced in daily life throughout the village, and participants’ reflections on potential cleaner air solutions.\ud \ud Individual air quality monitoring demonstrated that particulate levels frequently exceeded upper limits recommended by the WHO, even in the absence of identified sources of biomass burning. Ethnographic findings revealed the overwhelming impact of economic scarcity on individual air pollution exposures. Scarcity affected air pollution exposures through three pathways: daily hardship, limitation, and precarity. We use the theory of structural violence, as described by Paul Farmer, and the concept of slow violence to interrogate the origins of this scarcity and global inequality. We draw on the ethnographic findings to critically consider sustainable approaches to cleaner air, without re-enacting existing systemic inequities. |
| وصف الملف: | application/pdf |
| اللغة: | English |
| تدمد: | 2059-7908 |
| الوصول الحر: | https://explore.openaire.eu/search/publication?articleId=doi_dedup___::523a22061fbc65e0152dbc1feaa9573dTest https://archive.lstmed.ac.uk/18131/8/e004970.full.pdfTest |
| حقوق: | OPEN |
| رقم الانضمام: | edsair.doi.dedup.....523a22061fbc65e0152dbc1feaa9573d |
| قاعدة البيانات: | OpenAIRE |
| تدمد: | 20597908 |
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