Health outcome
Chronic bronchitis
Part of: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
Also: chronic bronchitis, chronic cough and phlegm, chronic productive cough
Cough with sputum on most days for at least three months in each of two consecutive years. The definition is a symptom definition, which is why it can be established by questionnaire in populations where lung function testing is not available.
Why it matters indoors
The symptom definition is what makes this outcome so widely reported in household studies: the questions can be asked anywhere, in any language, without equipment, and they have been asked in the same form for over half a century, so results across settings and decades are comparable.
Its relation to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is partial. Chronic bronchitis describes mucus and cough; the disease is defined by airflow obstruction. A person can have either without the other, and a study reporting one is not reporting the other.
The indoor exposure it is most often attached to is solid fuel smoke, particularly in women who have cooked over open fires for decades — the population in which chronic bronchitis without a smoking history is common enough to have been recognised long before the measurements existed.
Indoor factors with evidence
| Factor | Effect | Population | Study design | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carbon dioxide (CO₂) | no effect size in the sentence | elementary school children · classroom | cross-sectional study of 1,019 students at 51 elementary schools in Coimbra (Portugal): questionnaire on symptoms and diseases with indoor air quality measurements in classrooms in fall/winter and spring/summer | F-0396 Indoor air quality and health in schools (2014) | machine |
| Coal | difference 19.0 (0.96–37.04) per 1 % % | — · home | repeat cross-sectional study of the same districts ten years apart: the change in the share of households cooking with coal related to the change in the prevalence of asthma and chronic bronchitis, adjusted for covariates | F-1683 The effects of indoor and outdoor air pollution on the preva… (2021) | machine |
| Biomass fuel | prevalence 16.7 | rural women · home | cross-sectional study of 760 rural women in India: cooking fuel recorded by interview together with kitchen location and ventilation, and morbidity assessed by history, clinical examination and peak expiratory flow | F-1737 Indoor Air Pollution from Biomass Combustion and its Adverse… (2013) | 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
- D029481
Cite this page
Coridum Research. Chronic bronchitis. Coridum Knowledge G-0180, 16 September 2026. https://coridum.com/k/G-0180/