Anthropogenic fires affected the temperate deciduous forests of Central Europe over millennia. Biomass burning releases carbon to the atmosphere and produces charcoal, which potentially contributes to the stable soil carbon pools and is an important archive of environmental history. The fate of charcoal in soils of temperate deciduous forests, i.e. the processes of charcoal incorporation and tr...

OBJECTIVE Charcoal-burning suicide has recently been spreading to many Asian countries. There have also been several cases involving this new method of suicide in Western countries. Restricting access to suicide means is one of the few suicide-prevention measures that have been supported by empirical evidence. The current study aims to assess the effectiveness of a community intervention progra...

BACKGROUND Charcoal burning in a sealed room has recently emerged as the second most common suicide means in Hong Kong, causing approximately 200 deaths each year. As charcoal burning suicide victims have a unique sociodemographic profile (i.e., predominantly economically active men), they may commit suicide at specific times. However, little is known about the temporal patterns of charcoal bur...

BACKGROUND Suicides by carbon monoxide poisoning resulting from burning barbecue charcoal reached epidemic levels in Hong Kong and Taiwan within 5 y of the first reported cases in the early 2000s. The objectives of this analysis were to investigate (i) time trends and regional patterns of charcoal-burning suicide throughout East/Southeast Asia during the time period 1995-2011 and (ii) whether a...

This review explores the long-term role of climate versus human activity on vegetation and fire dynamics in the eastern U.S. Early Holocene warming resulted in a conversion of Picea (boreal) to temperate Quercus and Pinus forests when indigenous populations were sparse but charcoal abundances were relatively high, underscoring the importance of climate. Pyrogenic trees also dominated during the...

Given the extent of tropical forest deforestation and as a number of conservation programmes and local communities rely on forest fragments, it has become important to understand how fragment exploitation by local communities affects forest structure and function. The effects of forest exploitation on forest structure and status of forest fragments were investigated in 20 nonreserved forest fra...

This article aims at providing biomass as an alternative to wood charcoal using in Ghana. Using agricultural wastes converted into charcoal briquettes to provide much needed source of cheap fuel that is cleaner in burning. It is also intended to create awareness of agricultural wastes briquettes technology in Ghana and to make use of the technology by small scale entrepreneurs. This paper also ...

BACKGROUND Effect of indoor air pollution (IAP) on birth weight remains largely unexplored but yet purported as the most important environmental exposure for pregnant women in developing countries due to the effects of second-hand smoke. We investigated the associations between the determinants of indoor air quality in households and birth weight. METHODS A cross-sectional study of 592 mother...