The ambitious GREEN India-2047 study undertaken by TERI estimates that if the WHO standard for air quality is met, the economic gains for each urban dweller would range from about Rs 600 to Rs 1500; for each slum dweller, Rs 2000 to Rs 7400 Indoor air pollution: the silent killerIndoor air pollution: the silent killer
Press release
The ambitious GREEN India-2047 study undertaken by TERI estimates that if the WHO standard for air quality is met, the economic gains for each urban dweller would range from about Rs 600 to Rs 1500; for each slum dweller, they could be as high as Rs 2000 to Rs 7400.
Women workers who reside in slums have the highest exposures because they experience pollution not only outdoors and at the work place, but also while cooking. Next to women, infants have very high exposures because they often sit close to their mothers during cooking.
Because women are most likely to do the cooking, and are likely to have their infants close by while they do so, women and infants have higher exposures than men. This study finds that in Delhi itself, if all the households that use dung cake for cooking, were to switch to kerosene, the net economic gains would be at least Rs 280 million. The results of the study indicate that 74% of India's population, which is rural, bears 84% of the exposure burden.
The study is different because it looks not just at outdoor air pollution but also at indoor pollution. People spend their day in different placesin the kitchen, indoors at home and at work, outdoors in fields and crowded roads. Because these different places can have very different levels of air pollution, how much pollution a person breathes in depends very much on who he or she isrich or poor, man or woman, infant or elderly. Particulate matter concentrations in kitchens due to the burning
of biofuels are known to be as high as 30 times the WHO standard, while concentrations at the workplace for primary workers can be as high as 12 times the WHO standard, though outdoor concentrations are about 2.5 times the WHO standard in urban and rural India, and 8 times the standard in slums in India.
Air pollution causes a range of health impacts from increasing the risk of death to increased asthma attacks, causing losses of income and greater medical expenses. The study estimates that nationwide, the deaths and asthma attacks due tovarious forms of indoor
pollution are three times that due to outdoor pollution.
Most research efforts and media attention has focused on outdoor air pollution. The TERI study has relied on a handful of studies done on indoor air pollution including two earlier studies by them on Delhi slums and the Garhwal Himalayas. The study in Garhwal estimated the amount of time women actually spent near cookstoves and found that about 80 100% of daily exposure of women and children was contributed by indoor pollution.
TERI's Delhi study targeted infants living in the capital's slums, and studied their health status, too.
What can be done about air pollution? Households which move from consuming
biofuels to such cleaner fuels such as kerosene and LPG are going to reduce their exposures to air pollution drastically.
However, isn't this a problem primarily of income distribution, poverty and also, significantly, access to better fuels? Since access to commercial fuels in rural areas is
poor, it is imperative to re-orient and widen, the improved cookstoves programme and the biogas programme of the government. The goal of these programmes has so far been seen primarily as reducing the consumption of
fuelwood; however their biggest benefit to users has been the reduction of smoke.
However, it would be a mistake to equate the air pollution problem entirely with the transition up the cooking energy ladder.
Outdoor air pollution has to be tackled simultaneously.
Also, with time, new sources of indoor air pollution crop up photocopying machines, insect sprays and paints all mean that indoor air pollution is a problem that is here to stay. It needs greater research so that more information is available at dealing with this problem as it evolves.
For further information, please write to
Ms Annapurna Vancheswaran
Communication cell
avanche@... |
