Health outcome · disease
Obesity
Also: adiposity, body mass index, BMI, overweight
Excess body fat sufficient to impair health, in adults usually defined by a body mass index at or above 30 kg/m². It appears in indoor air research both as a metabolic outcome and as the factor that modifies how strongly other exposures act.
Not reviewed by a clinician. This entry describes a disease or a symptom. We are introducing clinical review for pages of this kind; until that reviewer is in place, this page has been written and checked by the Coridum team but not reviewed by a clinician. It is general information and not medical advice. How this library is built is described in How we build this library.
Why it matters indoors
Obesity enters this vocabulary through three doors and they should not be confused.
As an outcome, it is studied against the semi-volatile compounds that indoor materials release — phthalates especially — on the hypothesis that some of them interfere with the hormonal regulation of fat storage. The human evidence is associational and rests largely on urinary metabolites rather than on air measurements.
As a modifier, it changes the size of other effects: obese people show larger responses to particle exposure in several airway and cardiovascular endpoints, so a study population’s body weight affects what it will find.
As a confounder, it travels with almost everything else. Body weight tracks income, diet and activity, which also track housing, fuel and ventilation — so an indoor association with a metabolic outcome that has not accounted for it carries little weight, and the caveat records whether it was adjusted for.
Indoor factors with evidence
| Factor | Effect | Population | Study design | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carbon monoxide (CO) | OR 1.66 (1.10–2.51) per one unit increase in log-transformed 24-hour personal carbon monoxide | adult women in rural areas · personal exposure of the woman in the household | cross-sectional analysis of the baseline visit of the Household Air Pollution Intervention Network (HAPIN) trial in rural Guatemala, India, Peru and Rwanda: 24-hour personal PM2.5, black carbon and carbon monoxide of adult women against body mass index, with linear and logistic models adjusted for age and household assets | F-0855 Ndikubwimana Exposure–response relationship of household air pollution on… (2025) | machine |
| Carbon dioxide (CO₂) | OR 2.21 (1.09–4.47) | residential occupants · home | observational study in 60 households: 12-hour and 24-hour indoor carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, total volatile organic compounds and particles measured against body-fat percentage, obesity and abdominal obesity of the residents, in single- and two-pollutant models adjusted for age and other covariates | F-1020 Chen et al. Positive Association between Indoor Gaseous Air Pollution an… (2021) | 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
- D009765
Cite this page
Coridum Research. Obesity. Coridum Knowledge G-0183, 16 September 2026. https://coridum.com/k/G-0183/