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CleanAirSIG: Reduction of Exposure to Indoor Air Pollutants In The Slums Of Kolkata,India
[top] [end]IntroductionRight Track is a Kolkata, India based NGO working in both rural and urban areas to improve the living conditions of the poorer sections of the society by providing education. They are presently working in urban slum areas of Kolkata. Their objective is to provide improvement in quality of air, drinking water, sanitation using better technologies in an integrated project.A survey conducted in the study area revealed that the children and women in these urban communities were having severe health problems due to poor indoor air quality, unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation system. Poor indoor air? required intervention to bring changes in cook stove and fuel used for the cook stove and better ventilation. It was understood that low cost and highly efficient cook stove would have a strong role in bringing about an improvement in the indoor air quality for these communities. One of the strong recommendations for the study was to involve local youth for production of low cost and highly efficient cook stove with the help of locally available materials. The logic behind the recommendation was that it would bring down the cost of the improved cook stove which are usually more expensive than the traditional stoves. Right Track subcontracted Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI),Pune to undertake the ?Household Energy Program For Reduction of Exposure to Indoor Air Pollutants? in the slum areas of Kolkata,India. Initially five slums of Kolkata, Howrah and 24 Parganas (South), West Bengal were identified for intervention. Most of these settlements are situated on the banks of river Ganga. Community youths both male and female who lived in these slums were inducted into the program as field workers. ARTI began the project by arranging an an awareness camp for the community youth and Right Track staff to explain the benefits of improved indoor air and impact of improved cooking stoves in improving the indoor air quality. Later the volunteers were provided a training in manufacturing improved stoves. The baseline or preintervention study has been completed. The reports of the same are presented below. These two reports present the results from a preliminary study on traditional stoves, fuels and emission levels from a project in the slums of Kolkata. The residents are mostly economically deprived households who have migrated from neighbouring states in search of a living. From this study we know that:
[top] [end]Project DetailsSub Recipient: Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)Contracting Agency: Right Track,Kolkata Funding Agency: GOAL,India  Read the first report here (52 KB) Read the second report here (141 KB) [top] [end] Request For Information And AdviceThe Appropriate Rural Technology Institute is seeking viable interventions to reduce exposure to indoor pollutants and provide cleaner air in informal settlements in Kolkata, and thus improve health, particularly for women and children.Decisions have still to be reached on the specific technologies and approaches that would help to improve air quality. Any ideas, suggestions or guidance from CleanAirSIG members with experience in this field will be appreciated. [top] [end]Suggestions and Information Provided By CleanAirSIG MembersIn response to the discussion on the CleanAir SIG discussion group the following useful suggestion were received.Smoke Hoods: Daniel Wanjohi recommend smoke hoods as a solution. But he also warned that introduction of a smoke hood would then need a lot of community mobilization, awareness and sensitization in order that they can incorporate smoke hoods in construction of their houses. More information on smoke hoods is needed and contributions will be welcome. LPG: LPG stoves were suggested as a solution by Ahmed Hood. He has worked in similar areas and has had very similar experience with IDPs in Eastern Sudan, Kassala town, He however said that the housing lots are much larger there. But the tricky thing was that everybody will say that LPG is very dangerous, explosion, poor people with their tiny, shanty and shift make shelters. In most cases, as in Sudan, their houses are built of wood, grass and plastic sheets. But in spite of these problems, Practical Action was successful in introducing LPG use in IDPs' and poor people homes. Through microfinance system and working through women groups the number of beneficiaries reached more than 2000 in about two years. The important thing was women?s education and training on safety precautions and handling of LPG. Civil Defense Department was involved to undertake such training. Over the project life and until now no accident is so far reported. Some advocates of LPG even say that it is much safer than kerosene, firewood and charcoal. But the question that needs to be addressed is that when LPG is introduced who will bear the cost for the LPG? Will it be subsidized or will it be on deferred payment like interest free installments? These are the important questions to be addressed. The beneficiaries will be happy to get a cylinder and a LPG stove. If the LPG stove and the first cylinder is given on a subsidy the participants may buy it but they will either not go for a second cylinder since it is costly, or they will buy one to do supplementary cooking thus making the cylinder last for 4-6 months. This will not solve the problem of poor indoor air quality and health status of the women and children too will not change. The worst scenario which is hard to believe but is very true, they are going to sell off the cylinder and stove in the second hand market for cash. Such is the level of poverty in these slums. Stoves with Chimney: Stoves with chimney are a good option in many cases so Kevin Chisholm asked Karabi to elaborate on the degree to which chimneys are presently used, whether they could be used in the study site, and the extent to which their use could be increased? In Kolkata in the slum households stoves with chimney do not work the reasons were as follows: The Laxmi stove (stove with chimney) was introduced in 2 households for testing. It may be seen from the reports that as a pre intervention measure we had been testing all the stove models for their performance in the field i.e in the households. We tested both the traditional stoves and the improved stoves in these households. The improved stoves we selected were the models we had selected for similar previous studies in the rural areas of India as a viable intervention to reduce indoor pollution. These stoves with chimney had been accepted by the rural population and it was one of the successful intervention solution for rural households. But when we tried to test the Laxmi stoves in the slum households the first hurdle was the roofs were made of Plastic in many households.Thus the fear was that, even if a small burning piece escaped from the chimney it could set the plastic roof on fire, which would then spread. The second hurdle was the height of the houses are low and if 5'-10 'chimneys stick out from the roof they would either come to the nose level of a tall person or the tall thin cement pipe would be exposed to the vagaries of environment (strong winds) and thus collapse. The third reason was the stove with chimney was too bulky to fit into the slum households and finally since Laxmi is a wood stove it was rejected by the slum dwellers since they had no access to wood and tree bark or coal briquettes cannot be used in Laxmi stoves. Hence although the Laxmi stove model with chimney was not beneficial in the slums of Kolkata it works very well in rural areas and may work equally successfully in other areas. Ethanol Stoves: The Domestic CleanCook ethanol stove is non-pressurized and cannot explode. Harry Stokes sent in a good suggestion. He wrote to say that they have had very good experience with the Dometic CleanCook ethanol stove in the refugee camps in Ethiopia, where the homes are very small, cramped and of course flammable. They have had the same positive experiences in poor homes in Addis Ababa and in our tests in other countries. The CleanCook ethanol stove is non-pressurized and cannot explode. It will not flare or flash like kerosene. The fuel is held adsorbed in a fuel canister and cannot spill. The stove has cooking power equivalent to that of an LPG stove. We have upward of 200,000 stove experience days virtually without any accidents and without any events that escalated to a hazardous situation. The CleanCook stove has been designed and engineered for safety but also gives the performance that is needed to cook quickly and to cook for a large family. They are just now introducing a next generation one-burner stove into these refugee camp homes, following the original prototype that we used for our pilot studies in 2004-06. Inquiries can be addresses to the Gaia Association at gaiaassociation@... or Frehiwot Hailu at frehiwoth@... . If a supply of ethanol, hydrous ethanol at 90% or more is fine, can be identified, then the ethanol stoves could be an option. They are clean burning with very, very low PM and low CO. It is a definitely a very good option for other countries where ethanol is easily available In India however, ethanol is not so easily available. We need a license for procuring it and it is very expensive. More suggestions to tackle poor indoor quality in slum households are welcome from the members. [top] [end] Suggestions for Selecting the Options Which Might Work Towards improving IAQIt may be difficult for a person to select which of the above options would work successfully in a project area. In such situations Liz Bates has suggested a very practical approach to select the options which might work towards reducing indoor air pollution. She has suggested that if it is not clear that one option is more popular than all the others, they should (in her opionion) be researched with the communities themselves, rather than researching the options and 'deciding' which one or two should be presented to them.Hence her approach would be to compile all the possible interventions into some sort of matrix or spreadsheet looking at the options for the near, middle, and long term. This is not her original idea, but one that their Kenya team devised to deal with the extreme poverty in the district. People started with 'fireless cookers' (insulated boxes) and an improved ceramic stove - this reduced smoke and saved fuel. The households were encouraged to save the money from fuel savings to join micro-credit schemes (run by the communities themselves) for other interventions at a time which suited their own family requirements. By engaging people in this way, they took ownership of the problem and thus it became a dynamic situation with people slowly but steadily making changes. So her route to moving forward (and it is only one of many) would be:
Practical Action has just completed a two-project programme based on this approach and a second book / CD is soon to be in print. I'll make sure it is made available as soon as possible for people wanting it. Elizabeth Riddiford said that she would take the opportunity to follow up some of Liz's suggestions with the community groups that she has contact with in Kenya very shortly. [top] [end]Links to Reports and PagesSarath Guttikunda sent some links to useful reports which might answer some of questioned raised in the discussion. He also mentioned that there were a few studies done in India (with TERI) and Guatemala also looked at Kitchen designs.http://esmap.org/filez/pubs/7132007104252_ChinaIAPSpecialReport.pdf http://esmap.org/filez/pubs/FinalIndiaforWeb.pdf http://esmap.org/filez/pubs/IndiaFULL.pdf http://esmap.org/filez/pubs/indiastrategiessixstates.pdf http://esmap.org/filez/pubs/06004GuatemalaFinalEnglishforWeb.pdf http://esmap.org/filez/pubs/0821360825EnvironmentalHealthandTraditional.pdf http://esmap.org/filez/pubs/03603FueluseGuatemala.pdf http://esmap.org/filez/pubs/312200735112_multitopichouseholdsurvey.pdf http://esmap.org/filez/pubs/26303India.pdf http://esmap.org/filez/pubs/31305MongoliaIAP090905forWeb.pdf http://esmap.org/filez/pubs/362007115002_KES8.pdf http://www.who.int/indoorair/health_impacts/cooking/en/index.html [top] [end]ContributorsUser:Dr Karabi Dutta 26 October 2007 Categories: CleanAirSIG| Indoor Air Pollution | ||||||
Page created:
26 October 2007; Last edited:
14 October 2008; Version: 11 | ||||||
Pagename: CleanAirSIG:IAPInSlumsKolkataIndia @HEDON: VMHA | ||||||
