Broadly, we focus on the impacts of energy use - typically at the household level -- on air pollution, climate, and health. While progress on providing clean household energy arguably follows development trajectories, there is need to accelerate the transition to clean cooking through innovative policy and dissemination approaches. Our research group builds the evidence base for these transitions -- based on health, environmental, and economic benefits -- using the multidisciplinary field of Environmental Health Sciences, which sits at the interface of laboratory science, aerosol chemistry, environmental engineering, and implementation science, as the foundation of our work. Our work falls into some broad thematic areas, discussed below.
Household air pollution contributes substantially to ambient air pollution. Estimates of this contribution range between 20 and 45% globally, with large spatial heterogeneity. Reducing household air pollution from solid fuel use thus has benefits across scales — it benefits people in homes who rely on these fuels, but also provides benefits to communities and airsheds by reducing ambient air pollution levels.
We engage in policy-oriented experiments to help justify continued investment in clean household energy. These range from cost-effectiveness analyses to behavior change campaigns to pragmatic, scalable policies targeting the most vulnerable populations.
Our group makes measurements to estimate exposure and, in doing so, inform policies, evaluate interventions, and help provide evidence of potential health risk. Where instrumentation is lacking, we develop our own or adapt technologies used in other sectors and disciplines.
Interventions to decrease household air pollution exposures have a long history, ranging from so-called ‘improved’ biomass stoves that burn available fuels cleanly to clean fuels, like liquefied petroleum gas and ethanol, to electricity. Our group works on evaluating interventions from cost, environmental, climate, and health perspectives.
With Manish Desai, Krishnendu Mukhopadhyay, Naveen Puttaswamy, Sankar Sambandam, Gurusamy Thangavel, and Kalpana Balakrishnan.
The world’s most ambitious scale up of clean fuels has taken place across India in the past five years. The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) program, building upon previous efforts, provided access to LPG for an additional 80 million homes. However, continued fuel stacking and inconsistent coverage of the intervention has left overall household air pollution exposure reductions in households and associated ambient air pollution reductions lower than what is needed to meet Indian national standards or WHO guidelines. Several recent modelling exercises suggest that household biomass burning results in significant contributions to ambient air pollution at national and regional levels. However, there is almost no actual data to support quantitative targets for program design and maintenance at the village and district level that could guide village coverage goals for household use of LPG to displace solid fuel burning. Because of the PMUY scale up history, patchy uptake at community levels, and relatively low level of industrial sources of pollution, Southern India provides an ideal setting to study the Reach and Effectiveness of this massive LPG program and to contribute evidence-based guidance to support critical implementation targets for policy around village- level coverage and LPG utilization.
Underhill, L. J., de las Fuentes, L., Nicolaou, L., Hossen, S., Diaz-Artiga, A., Pillarisetti, A., Papageorghiou, A. T., Ndagijimana, F., Rosa, G., Thangavel, G., McCracken, J. P., Balakrishnan, K., Mukhopadhyay, K., Steenland, K., Thompson, L. M., Waller, L. A., Clark, M. L., Johnson, M. A., Garg, S., … Davila-Roman, V. G. (2025). Household air pollution exposure in adult women is associated with increased carotid intima-media thickness: A cross-sectional study of the Household Air Pollution Intervention Network trial. International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health, 270, 114649. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheh.2025.114649
Karakwende, P., Checkley, W., Chen, Y., Clark, M. L., Clasen, T., Dusabimana, E., Jabbarzadeh, S., Johnson, M., Kalisa, E., Kirby, M., Naher, L., Ndagijimana, F., Ndikubwimana, A., Ntakirutimana, T., Ntivuguruzwa, J. de D., Peel, J. L., Piedrahita, R., Pillarisetti, A., … Rosa, G. (2025). Predictors of Personal Exposure to Fine Particulate Matter, Black Carbon, and Carbon Monoxide among Pregnant Women in Rwanda: Baseline Data from the HAPIN Trial. In Journal of Health and Pollution (Vol. 13, Issue 1). Environmental Health Perspectives. https://doi.org/10.1289/jhp1049
With Lisa Thompson (Emory), Johannes Urpelainen (Johns Hopkins), Carlos Gould (Columbia), and Morsel Research and Development (Uttar Pradesh, India)
India has undergone a dramatic household energy transformation in recent years, driven by government initiatives to increase clean fuel access. These improvements have not led to complete transitions to clean cooking, with most households continuing regular biomass use, a trend that may be exacerbated by the COVID‐19 pandemic. We leverage and extend a recently completed energy survey of 1440 households in rural Jharkhand by deploying a follow‐up, telephone‐based questionnaire multiple times over the next year, enabling analysis of how COVID‐19 and stay‐at‐home orders alter energy use behaviors. Findings from this longitudinal study will help (1) understand drivers of stacking or exclusive LPG or biomass use; (2) provide insights into how resilient household energy use patterns are to sudden economic and social shocks; and (3) establish guidance that may inform planning for the next pandemic or other unexpected shock.
In Maharashtra, India, we collaborated with Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research (SRIHER) and KEM Hospital Research Centre to provide clean fuels to pregnant women, recruited in the late first or early second trimester, in Pune district, Maharashtra, India. Our study sought to evaluate whether fuel use could be incentivized using a conditional cash transfer and, additionally, what the benefit and cost of providing free fuel during pregnancy would be in terms of pollution exposure reduction and exclusive use of clean fuels. Our study had multiple arms: one in which household received a clean LPG stove and two cylinders of fuel; one in which household were paid for their LPG use, using a novel conditional cash transfer sensor; and one in which households received free fuel for the duration of pregnancy (up to one free refill per month). Finally, we sought to assess the feasibility of targeting newly wed couples prior to conception; we did so because reducing exposures in the first trimesters is thought to be critical. Findings from the study, which was funded by the Clean Cooking Implementation Science Network, were extensively published.
Mollinedo, E., McCracken, J. P., Johnson, M., Piedrahita, R., Pillarisetti, A., Waller, L. A., Wang, J., Thompson, L. M., Diaz-Artiga, A., de Leon, O., Ramirez, A., Polanco, A., Campbell, D., Kearns, K. A., Kremer, J., Nicolaou, L., Clark, M. L., Balakrishnan, K., Rosa, G., … Naeher, L. P. (2025). Comparing Performance and Reliability of Collocated Enhanced Children’s MicroPEM (ECM) on Gravimetric and Nephelometric PM2.5 Personal Exposure Samples in Field Measurements in Rural Guatemala. In N. B. Dhital (Ed.), Indoor Air (Vol. 2025, Issue 1). Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1155/ina/8812602
Pillarisetti, A., Ye, W., Peel, J. L., Chang, H., Underhill, L. J., Balakrishnan, K., Díaz-Artiga, A., McCracken, J. P., Rosa, G., Thompson, L. M., Aravindalochanan, V., Boyd Barr, D., Chen, Y., Chiang, M., Clark, M. L., Davila-Roman, V., Jabbarzadeh, S., Johnson, M. A., Kirby, M. A., … Younger, A. (2025). Household air pollution and blood pressure among adult women participants of the Household Air Pollution Intervention Network Trial: An exposure-response analysis. Environmental Research, 285, 122570. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2025.122570
Pillarisetti, A., Alnes, L. W. H., Ye, W., McCracken, J. P., Canuz, E., & Smith, K. R. (2022). Repeated assessment of PM2.5 in Guatemalan kitchens cooking with wood: Implications for measurement strategies. In Atmospheric Environment (p. 119533). Elsevier BV. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2022.119533
Rajamani, K. D., Sambandam, S., Mukhopadhyay, K., Puttaswamy, N., Thangavel, G., Natesan, D., Ramasamy, R., Sendhil, S., Natarajan, A., Aravindalochan, V., Pillarisetti, A., Johnson, M., Rosenthal, J., Steenland, K., Piedhrahita, R., Peel, J., Clark, M. L., Boyd Barr, D., Rajkumar, S., … Balakrishnan, K. (2022). Visualizing Field Data Collection Procedures of Exposure and Biomarker Assessments for the Household Air Pollution Intervention Network Trial in India. In Journal of Visualized Experiments (Issue 190). MyJove Corporation. https://doi.org/10.3791/64144
Weltman, R. M., Edwards, R. D., Staimer, N., Pillarisetti, A., Arora, N. K., & Nizkorodov, S. A. (2025). Ethyne Furan Ratios as Indicators of High and Low Temperature p-PAH Emissions from Household Stoves in Haryana India. In Atmosphere (Vol. 16, Issue 2, p. 121). MDPI AG. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos16020121