Health outcome · marker · measured in mmHg
Blood pressure
Also: systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, pulse pressure, arterial pressure
The pressure in the arteries, recorded as a systolic and a diastolic value. As a continuous measurement repeated on the same people, it is the endpoint through which short indoor interventions are most often tested for a cardiovascular effect.
Why it matters indoors
A measurement, not a diagnosis: this page holds what the cuff reads, while the diagnosis it may lead to is hypertension. The distinction matters because the study designs differ. A trial of filtration or of a cleaner stove cannot show a change in disease over a few weeks, but it can show a change of a few millimetres of mercury — and at population scale a shift that small still moves stroke and heart disease.
The response is fast. Blood pressure reacts to particle exposure within hours to days through autonomic and vascular pathways, which is what makes the crossover designs common in this field possible: the same person is measured with the intervention and without it.
It is also the endpoint most easily disturbed by everything else. Temperature, posture, time of day, salt, activity and the cuff itself all move it, which is why well-conducted studies standardise the measurement and report how they did so.
Indoor factors with evidence
| Factor | Effect | Population | Study design | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carbon monoxide (CO) | difference 4.3 (1.1–7.4) per peak carbon monoxide, a two-hour moving average above 4.1 ppm (the 90th percentile of the distribution), against all other exposure mmHg | pregnant women · personal exposure of the pregnant woman in the household | sub-study of a randomised cookstove trial in rural Ghana: 24-hour ambulatory blood-pressure monitoring in pregnant women with concurrent personal carbon-monoxide monitoring, analysed by multilevel linear regression with a random intercept for each monitoring session and adjustment for awake hours and the peri-waking period | F-0728 Quinn Ambulatory monitoring demonstrates an acute association betw… (2017) | machine |
| Carbon monoxide (CO) | difference 4.5 (1.9–7.2) per peak carbon monoxide, a two-hour moving average above 4.1 ppm (the 90th percentile of the distribution), against all other exposure mmHg | pregnant women · personal exposure of the pregnant woman in the household | sub-study of a randomised cookstove trial in rural Ghana: 24-hour ambulatory blood-pressure monitoring in pregnant women with concurrent personal carbon-monoxide monitoring, analysed by multilevel linear regression with a random intercept for each monitoring session and adjustment for awake hours and the peri-waking period | F-0729 Quinn Ambulatory monitoring demonstrates an acute association betw… (2017) | machine |
| Particulate matter (PM₂.₅ and PM₁₀) | difference 3.83 (0.22–7.44) | — | panel study relating wildfire days to blood pressure: systolic and diastolic pressure of the participants compared between survey periods with and without wildfire days, and against the fine particulate matter of those periods | F-1482 Walker et al. Associations between fine particulate matter and in-home blo… (2025) | machine |
| Particulate matter (PM₂.₅ and PM₁₀) | difference 2.36 (-0.06–4.78) · borderline | — | panel study relating wildfire days to blood pressure: systolic and diastolic pressure of the participants compared between survey periods with and without wildfire days, and against the fine particulate matter of those periods | F-1483 Walker et al. Associations between fine particulate matter and in-home blo… (2025) | machine |
| Coal | other 0.08 (-0.005–0.17) | women younger than 40 years · home | longitudinal study of Chinese women: cooking fuel recorded at repeated surveys and blood pressure measured at each, with the difference in the slope of blood pressure against age compared between coal and clean fuel users | F-1773 Bellows et al. The Association of Cooking Fuel Use, Dietary Intake, and Blo… (2020) | machine |
| Coal | other 0.05 (-0.008–0.10) | women aged 40 years and over · home | longitudinal study of Chinese women: cooking fuel recorded at repeated surveys and blood pressure measured at each, with the difference in the slope of blood pressure against age compared between coal and clean fuel users | F-1774 Bellows et al. The Association of Cooking Fuel Use, Dietary Intake, and Blo… (2020) | machine |
| Carbon monoxide (CO) | a null result stated without a number; the study was designed around the cleaner-burning stove | non-pregnant adults · home | cross-sectional study in rural Malawi: blood pressure of non-pregnant adults measured alongside 24-hour personal PM2.5 and carbon-monoxide exposure in households with a cleaner-burning stove and without | F-1006 Bates et al. Association of a cleaner-burning stove with blood pressure i… (2025) | machine |
| Solid fuel | beta 2.76 (1.32–4.19) | women older than 65 years · home | cross-sectional study of long-lived Chinese adults: cooking fuel recorded by interview and blood pressure measured, with successive models adding cardiovascular risk factors and socioeconomic measures | F-1790 Yu Relationship of indoor solid fuel use for cooking with blood… (2022) | machine |
Each row is one Finding — a sentence as printed in one study, recorded with its page in the Coridum Knowledge Base. Follow the Finding number for the exact wording and the citation. Checked says who verified the row: machine means every automatic check passed and the surrounding text was read; person means someone read the sentence in the document. Rows are re-checked by a person over time. The studies are curated in the Coridum Knowledge Base; the reading of them together is a Claim, shown separately.
Identifiers
- MeSH
- D001794
Cite this page
Coridum Research. Blood pressure. Coridum Knowledge G-0152, 16 September 2026. https://coridum.com/k/G-0152/