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Abstract
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.