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.
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.
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.
NBSP – a partnership between the International Clinical Epidemiology Network (INCLEN), Columbia University, UC Berkeley, and Sri Ramachandra Institute for Higher Education and Research (SRIHER) – evaluated the feasibility of distributing clean cookstoves through the rural antenatal care system, which targets arguably the most vulnerable population — poor, pregnant, rural women. The study distributed 200 blower stoves to pregnant women at INCLEN’s SOMAARTH field site and tracked usage of the stoves continuously for > 15 months using our Stove Use Monitoring System (SUMS) and measured pollutant concentrations and exposures before and after introduction of the stove. Funding for this project came from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Lung Foundation, and the World Bank.
Steenland, K., Pillarisetti, A., Johnson, M., Rosenthal, J., Balakrishnan, K., Underhill, L., Thompson, L., McCracken, J., Waller, L., Nicolaou, L., Clark, M., Checkley, W., Peel, J., & Clasen, T. (2025). Optimizing Exposure Measures in Large-Scale Household Air Pollution Studies: Results from the Multicountry HAPIN Trial. In Environmental Science & Technology (Vol. 59, Issue 3, pp. 1693–1699). American Chemical Society (ACS). https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.4c08052
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
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
Ye, W., Campbell, D., Johnson, M., Balakrishnan, K., Peel, J. L., Steenland, K., Underhill, L. J., Rosa, G., Kirby, M. A., Díaz-Artiga, A., McCracken, J., Thompson, L. M., Clark, M. L., Waller, L. A., Chang, H. H., Wang, J., Dusabimana, E., Ndagijimana, F., Sambandam, S., … Pillarisetti, A. (2024). Exposure Contrasts of Women Aged 40–79 Years during the Household Air Pollution Intervention Network Randomized Controlled Trial. In Environmental Science & Technology (Vol. 59, Issue 1, pp. 69–81). American Chemical Society (ACS). https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.4c06337
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
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.
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
Shackelford, B. B., Steenland, K., Kirby, M. A., Balakrishnan, K., Chiang, M., Diaz-Artiga, A., McCracken, J. P., Thompson, L. M., Rosa, G., Waller, L. A., Jabbarzadeh, S., Wang, J., Pillarisetti, A., Johnson, M. A., Peel, J. L., Checkley, W., Clasen, T. F., Aravindalochanan, V., Bankundiye, G., … Younger, A. (2025). Gestational and postnatal exposures to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and their association with acute ear infections, diarrhea, respiratory symptoms, and mortality: A longitudinal study of infants in the multicountry Household Air Pollution Intervention Network (HAPIN) trial. Environmental Research, 285, 122258. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2025.122258
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