Health Risk Analysis of Heating Fuel Choice: Case Study in Kentucky

Combustion-generated pollutants, principally those from solid-fuel including biomass and coal when cooking and heating, bring out a significant public health hazard in both developed and developing countries. Most of the existing studies addressing this issue focus on developing countries, and on exposure when cooking rather than heating. By using the Kentucky Homeplace Program data, this research explores the health risk associated with heating fuel choice. Logit model was applied to get the estimation. The results indicate that using polluting heating fuel increases the odds of suffering from respiratory disease, although this positive effect is not significantly strong. The study also shows the strong evidence that people having asthma or allergy condition are less likely to choose polluting heating, and using coal as heating fuel has significantly positive effect on the prevalence of respiratory disease. Some demographic, socioeconomic and lifestyle characteristics do have significant effects on the prevalence of the respiratory disease, asthma and allergy.