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Background Household air pollution (HAP) from residential combustion considerably affects human health in rural China. Large-scale population migration and rural lifestyle changes during the Spring Festival are supposed to change the household air pollution and health risks; however, limited field study has determined its impacts on HAP and short-term health outcomes. Methods A field study was conducted in rural areas of Southern China before and during the Spring Festival to explore the associations between HAP and blood pressure considering different factors such as cooking fuel, heating fuel, and smoking. Stationary real-time PM2.5 monitors were used to measure PM2.5 concentrations of the kitchen, living room, and yard of 156 randomly selected households. Personal exposure to PM2.5 was calculated based on the results of stationary samplers and corresponding time local residents spent in different microenvironments, and one adult resident was recruited of each family for the blood pressure measurement. Results Both personal exposure to PM2.5 and blood pressures of local residents increased during Spring Festival compared to the days before the holiday. Based on generalized linear model coupled with dominance analysis approach, it was found that personal PM2.5 exposure was positively associated with the factors of population size and the types of cooking and heating fuels with the relative contributions of approximately 82%, and systolic blood pressure (SBP, 100-120 mmHg as normal range for adults) was positively and significantly associated with personal PM2.5 exposures with the relative contribution of 11%. Conclusion The findings in this study demonstrated that Spring Festival can give rise to increase of HAP and hypertension risks, also related to tremendous solid fuel use, suggesting further policy making on promoting cleaner energy in rural areas and more attention on large population migration during national holidays.

Fine particulate matter (PM2.5 ) concentrations show high variations in different microenvironments indoors, which has considerable impact on risk management. However, the real-time variations of PM2.5 exposure associated with per activity/microenvironment and intra-variation among family members remain undefined. In this study, real-time monitors were used to collect real-time PM2.5 data in different microenvironments in 32 households in urban community of China. Peak concentrations of PM2.5 were found in kitchen. The parallel levels of PM2.5 household indoor and outdoor indicated the benefit of clean energies use. To validly assess the health risk of individuals, we proposed a novel method to estimate the real-time exposure of all residents and firstly investigate the intra-variation of PM2.5 exposure among family members. The member who is responsible for cooking in the family had the maximum PM2.5 exposure. The ratios among intraindividual variations demonstrated children usually had lower exposure compared to the adults as they stayed more time in lower polluted microenvironments such as living room and bedroom. The exposure intensity in living room was above 1.0 for most residents, indicating it is warranted to alleviate the air pollution in living room. This study firstly focused on the intra differences of PM2.5 exposure among family members and provided a new insight for indoor air pollution management. The results suggested when adopting measures to reduce exposure, the microenvironments pattern of each member should be taken into consideration. Future work is welcomed to move another big step on this issue to protect the human health.