“Dealing with Climate Change” focus on India - Professor Kirk R. Smith was interviewed by Business Economics . May 2019.
Honorary Professorship from Mongolia National University of Medical Sciences
Professor Kirk Smith receiving an Honorary Professorship from Mongolia National University of Medical Sciences, presented by the university president, Tsolmon Jadamba, on March 28, 2019.
Undercooked: An Expensive Push to Save Lives and Protect the Planet Falls Short
Winds of Change, National Geographic Documentary on the Household LPG Program in India
Wind of Change is a production of National Geographic featuring the Household LPG Program in India (June 2018). Includes interviews with Dr. Sunita Narain, Director of the Centre for Science and Environment and Dr. Kirk Smith.
Clean Air Crowdsourcing Competition for Students at Indian Institutions, deadline January 5, 2018
CCAPC/TERI solicit novel ideas that propose ways to reduce the scale and impact of ambient air pollution in India. Innovative entries within or across the spectrum from technological, regulatory, and behavioral angles are encouraged. Entrants should consider the problem of ambient air pollution in any part of the country and from any source as well as the problems in Delhi. The deadline is January 5, 2018. Submit online here.
Domestic air pollution turning homes into deathtraps - WION News, India
900 thousand people die from indoor air pollution in India alone. The government is trying hard to introduce clean fuel. But, in rural India people are still reluctant to use clean fuel. WION's Madhumita Saha brings you this startling report (WION). Video available here.
Soup to Nuts: Finding, Understanding, and Coming to Grips with the Largest Environmental Health Risk Factor in the World
Saban Research Institute Annual Symposium: GLOBAL IMPACT OF POLLUTION ON MATERNAL AND CHILD HEALTH ACROSS THE LIFE SPAN, February 9, 2017, Los Angeles, California. Presentation available at the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles symposium website.
WION Interview with Kirk Smith: Air Pollution is the Biggest Health Risk Factor in India
Rising pollution is cutting short lives and impacting our world like never before. WION correspondent Madhumita Saha spoke to Professor Kirk Smith about health challenges and how it can be tackled.
Interview available here.
Washington Post: By 2085, most cities could be too hot for the Summer Olympics
Washington Post, Energy and Environment, August 16, 2016 Article on Smith et al. Lancet article.
From the article:
... scientists are going further by using the Games to teach a grim climate lesson. At a high-end scenario for greenhouse gas emissions, a team of researchers write in the influential medical journal The Lancet, fewer and fewer major cities will be able to host a Summer Olympics as the end of the century nears. The reason? Too much risk of seeing weather conditions get so hot and humid that they would pose a major heat illness danger to athletes.
LPG scheme is historic opportunity to improve households’ health, Financial Express, New Delhi, April 28, 2016
LPG scheme is historic opportunity to improve households’ health
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will unveil the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) at Ballia in Uttar Pradesh on May 1. The scheme aims to provide LPG connections without security deposits to 50 million women from BPL households over the next three years.
Air Pollution, What Can We Do?
Beijing is shrouded in choking smog. Internationally, diesel cars have been rigged to cheat on emissions tests. How concerned should you be? Kirk R. Smith, PhD, MPH, Director of the Global Health and Environment Program at UC Berkeley, studies the dangers of airborne pollutants, and discusses what we can do to limit the risk. Air Pollution, What Can We Do?
World Health Assembly closes, passing resolutions on air pollution...
26 MAY 2015 ¦ GENEVA - The World Health Assembly closed today, with Director-General Dr Margaret Chan noting that it had passed several “landmark resolutions and decisions”. Three new resolutions were passed today: one on air pollution, one on epilepsy and one laying out the next steps in finalizing a framework of engagement with non-State actors.
Air pollution
Delegates at the World Health Assembly adopted a resolution to address the health impacts of air pollution – the world’s largest single environmental health risk. Every year 4.3 million deaths occur from exposure to indoor air pollution and 3.7 million deaths are attributable to outdoor air pollution. This was the first time the Health Assembly had debated the topic.
The resolution highlights the key role national health authorities need to play in raising awareness about the potential to save lives and reduce health costs, if air pollution is addressed effectively. It also stresses the need for strong cooperation between different sectors and integration of health concerns into all national, regional and local air pollution-related policies. It urges Member States to develop air quality monitoring systems and health registries to improve surveillance for all illnesses related to air pollution; promote clean cooking, heating and lighting technologies and fuels; and strengthen international transfer of expertise, technologies and scientific data in the field of air pollution.
The resolution asks the WHO Secretariat to strengthen its technical capacities to support Member States in taking action on air pollution. This includes further building capacity to: implement the "WHO air quality guidelines" and "WHO indoor air quality guidelines; conduct cost-benefit assessment of mitigation measures; and advance research into air pollution’s health effects and effectiveness. At the Sixty-ninth World Health Assembly, WHO will propose a road map for an enhanced global response by the health sector that reduces the adverse health effects of air pollution.
The final resolution is available here.
Research Profile: Kirk R. Smith
“We’ve put the problem of household air pollution on the map, and it is recognized as one of most important public health issues in the world.”
BY STEPHEN ROBITAILLE JUNE 17, 2015
EXCERPT:
In the early 1980s, Kirk R. Smith PhD ’77, MPH ’72 was a newly minted professor initiating the first studies anywhere on indoor air pollution in the developing world. His research began with the documentation of indoor air pollution in villages from solid-fuel cookstoves, which burn fuel such as wood or coal, and the health impacts on those who use them. Today Smith is widely acknowledged as a world leader on household air pollution and its impacts on health and climate change. Smith, along with other researchers and graduate students, documented health and social impacts like chronic lung disease, and the dangers facing women during fuel collection trips. They also developed tools for measuring pollution levels and rating cookstoves to help identify designs that emit less pollution.
Through the 1990s, as climate change assumed greater importance in the scientific world, Smith’s work grew to include documentation of cookstoves’ worldwide contribution to climate change.
Along the way, Smith and his colleagues developed the concept of “co-benefits,” the accepted term today for anti-pollution efforts that deliver both health and climate outcomes—a reduction in smoke from cookstoves, for example, improves health as it boosts overall outdoor air quality and reduces the impacts of climate change.
But despite his more than three decades in the field, Smith still itches to make more concrete improvements in his chosen field.
He cites the example of a woman in India, who was a subject in his first study, in 1981, of cookstoves and household air pollution. The woman was the first person in the world to wear a pollution monitor in her dwelling, while she cooked on a traditional cookstove. Smith keeps a photo of her—with the monitor around her waist—in his office.
Smith revisited the village last summer and looked the woman up. She remembered Smith and the study in which she had participated, and the two posed for photos together. But Smith saw the woman still cooking on the same pollution-spewing cookstove as when he met her 33 years ago.
“We’ve put the problem of household air pollution on the map, and it is recognized as one of most important public health issues in the world. It is sobering, however, that poor water and sanitation were recognized as a problem in the late 1800s, but still pose serious health risks in poor countries. We don’t want to be 120 years from now and have still not done anything about household air pollution,” says Smith. “At this point, I’m not so interested in finding yet another disease associated with it—the question is, what do we do about it that works?”
With that question in mind, Smith has been contributing to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports for many years. The IPCC is the leading international body for the assessment of climate change, operating under the auspices of the United Nations. It does not conduct research or monitor climate change data, but focuses on review and assessment of the most recent scientific, technical, and socioeconomic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change.
“It’s very complicated business, climate change,” says Smith. “The IPCC reports are the mother of all assessments; they are the most comprehensive review available anywhere. They are signed off on by 190 governments, ranging from Saudi Arabia to Cuba, with 800 scientists directly contributing—and that’s a remarkable achievement for humanity.”
Smith is a convening lead author for the health chapter of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, which was published in October 2014. In 2007, he was a contributing author to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC. The IPCC shared that year’s Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore.
Kirk Smith honored with California’s premier air quality award
2014 Haagen-Smit awards recognize outstanding air quality achievements in research, science and technology advancements
Release Date: 07/01/2015
By Jasmin M. Huynh
Kirk R. Smith, professor of global environmental health at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, is one of three recipients of the 2014 Haagen-Smit Clean Air Award. He was recognized for his leadership in research and international efforts in the area of household air pollution from solid-fuel burning traditional cookstoves.
Haagen-Smit Clean Air Awards, the "Nobel Prize" in air quality achievement, are given annually by the California Air Resources Board (ARB) to individuals who have made significant lifetime contributions toward improving air quality and climate change science, technology and policy, furthering the protection of public health.
"These three individuals have championed public health with extraordinary contributions to air pollution science, research and technology," says ARB Chairman Mary D. Nichols. "The Haagen-Smit Award is our way of honoring these individuals who have demonstrated a sustained commitment to protecting public health throughout their long and distinguished careers."
Smith’s research on the complexity of household air pollution exposure was critical in the development of global burden of disease estimates by the World Health Organization, which now ascribes more than four million premature deaths to household smoke from solid fuels. He has documented the associated risk for pneumonia and adverse birth outcomes in children, and for cataracts, tuberculosis, heart disease, and chronic lung disease in women.
He holds visiting professorships in India and China where he has worked since the early 1980s collecting field measurements, pursuing quantitative research, and working closely with medical and engineering professionals to bring clean air to residents of developing countries, particularly those who, by virtue of their household circumstances, suffer extremely high exposures to smoke from solid-fuel burning in traditional cookstoves.
Smith’s research and influence also extend to energy and climate. He was a key participant in the Global Energy Assessment and lead author of the health chapter in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Working Group on Impacts. He serves on a number of national and international scientific advisory committees, including the National Research Council’s Board on Atmospheric Science and Climate, the Executive Committee for the World Health Organization’s Air Quality Guidelines, and the International Comparative Risk Assessment of the Global Burden of Disease Project.
He was elected as a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1997. In 2009, he received the Heinz Prize in Environment and was awarded the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement in 2012.
Smith was honored with the Haagen-Smit Clean Air Award on June 25 in Sacramento. He also gave a Clean Air Leadership Talk on June 24. The two other recipients of the award are Donald R. Blake, professor of chemistry at UC Irvine, and John C. Wall, vice president and chief technical officer for diesel engine manufacturer Cummins Inc.
The award is named for the late Dr. Arie Haagen-Smit, known as the "father" of air pollution science and control. The award recognizes those who continue his legacy through perseverance, leadership, and innovation in the areas of research, environmental policy, science and technology, public education, and community service. The selection committee is comprised of past award winners.