Smoke from indoor cooking can kill

IF SMOKE gets in your eyes, do you die? You may cry but when the smoke gets to your nose, yes, you may die. It was reported that some two million people do, especially housewives from developing countries who inhale smoke from cooking.

The medical group Glaxo-Wellcome in a study says acute respiratory infections, ear and eye problems, breathlessness, chest pains, headaches and giddiness are just some of the symptoms that poor rural women and children suffer from due to smoke from cooking.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) attributes 1.6 million deaths each year to indoor smoke inhalation with women and children at greatest risk.

The organisation said that smoke in the home kills more people than malaria does, and almost as many as unsafe water and sanitation. The problem affects more than two billion people in the developing world.

In the Philippines where some 80 per cent of the rural population still depend on fuelwood for cooking, many, especially children suffer from asthma attacks due to inhalation of smoke from firewood used for cooking. The picture is no different in millions of homes in Southeast Asia, South America, South Asia and Africa.

On a typical day in Iringa, Tanzania, for instance when I was assigned there in 1996, women and young girls return with water, dusty and tired from the trip. After pausing for a moment to play with the children, they begin preparations for dinner.

The firewood they collected earlier that morning is transferred into the cooking hut. Within the hut lies a stove which consists of a circle of stones, piled with carefully assembled wood, beneath a metal potholder.

The fire is lit and several women gather around to help stir the prepared cornmeal and to feed logs into the fire. The younger girls are eager to help, and many women have infants slung over their backs as they squat low over the fire.

Every few minutes, the fire emits a waft of smoke or the wind changes direction, causing some of the women to laugh and run out of the hut to avoid inhaling the fumes. This nightly cooking ritual brings these women closer together and allows them to exchange stories with one another, complain about their spouses, tease the younger girls about their adolescent worries, and prepare the only substantial meal that their families will eat all day. Unknown to them, a deadly killer is stalking the family-the smoke from the burning firewood.

This scene is typical for a large portion of the human population, especially those living in the developing world. Close to three billion people, or nearly half of the world's population, use biomass such as wood, dried leaves, dung, or hay as their main source of fuel for cooking and heating.

The majority of these people live in rural areas of developing nations. In the poorest countries of the world, the number of people using biomass to heat cooking stoves amounts to over 80 per cent of the population.

Typical indoor stoves do not burn biomass smoothly, making them low-efficiency sources of heat. Additionally, the use of biomass as a source of heat for cooking has several harmful consequences.

Second, significant pollutants released by biomass combustion include greenhouse gasses that contribute to global warming, such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and methane. Additional pollutants include sulphur dioxide (a major component of acid rain), nitrogen oxides, dioxins, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and fine particulate matter.

There are over 200 different chemicals and organic compounds in wood smoke alone, nearly all of which are pollutants small enough to be inhaled by humans and other animals. Levels of harmful pollutants released by indoor biomass burning are often 10 to 20 times higher than the recommended upper limits of exposure established by the WHO.

The WHO has shown that patterns of exposure to indoor air pollution from biomass smoke make it a more significant threat to human health than outdoor air pollution. Biomass cooking stoves are typically found in areas with low ceilings, making it necessary to squat so that a person's face is in close proximity to smoke.

Cooking huts are often poorly ventilated, filled with smoke, and crowded with several women at once. Under these conditions, it would be easy for a person's hair, clothing, or the surrounding structure (often also made of wood) to catch fire.

Young children are usually eager to help their mothers cook, and women often have their babies and infants secured to their backs. This exposes the children, whose lungs and immune systems are still developing (and therefore more susceptible to damage), to similar levels of smoke as their mothers. Typical exposures last from three to seven hours each day.

Indoor air pollution contributes to 36 per cent of all acute respiratory infections in children. Such infections are the leading worldwide cause of death in children under age 5. Deaths linked to biomass smoke exposure compete with malaria as the leading cause of death in adults in developing nations every year.

High concentrations of indoor air pollutants lead to a number of adverse health consequences, which disproportionately burden women and young girls. These consequences include acute lower respiratory tract infections, including sinusitis, otitis media, and pneumonia.

Prolonged exposures can cause chronic bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, upper airway cancers (including nasopharyngeal and laryngeal cancers), cardiovascular disease, pulmonary arterial hypertension, cataracts, low birth weight, and perinatal mortality (stillbirths and deaths during the first week of life).

Health effects often associated with indoor pollution from biomass fuels are headaches, respiratory diseases, adverse pregnancy outcomes (such as stillbirth, low birth weight), cancer and eye problems. Several studies indicate that the level of indoor air pollution is significantly correlated with incidences of these effects.

Generally, women are not sufficiently aware of the hazards and the need for ventilation, and do not relate smoke with health problems they or their children may have.

Other major health hazards related to cooking are fires in kitchens, and poor ergonomics of cook stoves so women have to spend hours in uncomfortable positions.

The UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) is helping countries introduce safer, more efficient stoves in rural communities. It helps poor families save time and energy by reducing the amount of fuelwood they need.

The Brunei Times