Effects of Indoor Air Pollution from Biomass Fuel Use on Women’s Health in India

Indoor air pollution (IAP) is an important cause of morbidity and mortality throughout the world. But its severity is much more in the developing countries due to burning of traditional biomass fuels such as wood, animal dung, and crop residues for daily domestic cooking in rural households. Indeed, smoke exposure from biomass burning is regarded as one of the most serious environmental problems facing the developing countries throughout the world (World Bank, 1992; Smith and Mehta, 2000). It is estimated that IAP from biomass burning is responsible for 4% of the global burden of disease (Bruce et al., 2000), and a conservative estimate indicates that the practice of biomass fuel use endangers the health of 400-700 million people across the globe and causes 2.8 million premature deaths every year (Bruce et al., 2000). It affects especially the women and children who spend long hours inside the cooking areas (Larson and Rosen, 2002). As in many other developing countries, biomass fuel is still extensively being used in rural households of India for daily household cooking as well as for room heating in hilly areas. There have been some studies on the effects of biomass use on respiratory health of rural women in India, but the overall impact of biomass fuel use on public health, especially that of women and children in rural areas of the country, is yet to be elucidated. In this chapter, we have collated the published reports on health impact of IAP from biomass fuel use in India and elsewhere. In addition, we have incorporated some important ndings from our ongoing investigation on respiratory and general health impairments of women in rural areas of West Bengal, a state in Eastern India. We have included the ndings of 1260 women (median age 38 years) who cook with biomass regularly for the past ve years or more and have compared these results with that of 650 liquid petroleum gas (LPG)-using women from similar neighborhood matched for age (median age 37 years), tobacco smoking and chewing habits, and body mass index.