A comprehensive bibliometric analysis of research on health and environmental impacts of particle emissions from wood combustion in residential heating.

Wood is the first and continues to be an important renewable energy source in residential heating. Transition to wood-based energy production has been supported by countries due to climate policies and rising costs of other energy sources. However, small-scale wood combustion releases harmful pollutants, including fine particles, some of which have undefined adverse health and environmental impacts. Researchers used different methods to assess the harmful effects of wood combustion. Since this is a multidisciplinary topic with various interconnected areas, our objective is to conduct a bibliometric analysis to highlight the main research axis and its significance. It is expected that it could prominently contribute to the comprehensive understanding of knowledge in this field and pave the way for future research directions. To this end, a visual-quantitative analysis approach with the identification of publication directions over the last two decades is adopted. The related scientific literature was drawn from Scopus and an in-depth scientific mapping analysis was performed. Our bibliometric results highlight that residential wood combustion (RWC) poses serious risks to human health and contributes to climate change, including decreased life expectancy, elevated cancer risk, and escalated global temperatures. Emerging research includes human health-related risk assessment, brown carbon light absorption, and chemical composition. The lack of a link between health effects and chemical composition of particle emissions was observed. Therefore, future research should aim to implement an integrated assessment of RWC particles' properties, alongside the parallel development of emission-health risk factors, to link emissions with impacts and guide targeted mitigation strategies.