An Aberdeen student has landed a prestigious award from an American medical society for his research into air pollution in Nepal.
Om P. Kurmi, a final year PhD student from the University of Aberdeen, was recently presented with the David V. Bates award at the American Thoracic Society Conference in Canada.
The conference is the main international gathering for respiratory disease and attracted over 15,000 delegates from around the world.
Om received his award and $500 for his "outstanding contribution to the field of Environmental and Occupational Health". He was given the opportunity to chair one of the sessions at the conference, where he presented his award-winning work on biomass exposure in rural Nepal.
It was judged to be a technically excellent study that contributes considerably to understanding the effects of inhaling biomass smoke, in this case from wood, on lung health.
Om was awarded an IAHS studentship in 2005 by the University to study the health effects of indoor air pollution in rural and urban Nepal and is supervised by Prof Jon Ayres and Dr Padam Simkhada.
Om said: "We are still analysing our data, but the initial analysis has shown that 16.4% of the rural population that use wood as their primary fuel for cooking have diseased lungs compared to 9.4% of the urban population who use relatively cleaner fuel like LPG.
"We have also found that respiratory symptoms like wheeziness and breathlessness are nearly twice as common in rural areas compared to the urban population."