Abstract
Environmental and occupational risk factors contribute to nearly 40% of the national burden of disease in India, with air pollution in the indoor and outdoor environment ranking amongst leading risk factors. It is now recognized that the health burden from air pollution exposures that primarily occur in the rural indoors, from pollutants released during the incomplete combustion of solid fuels in households, may rival or even exceed the burden attributable to urban outdoor exposures. Few environmental epidemiological efforts have been devoted to this setting, however. We provide an overview of important available information on exposures and health effects related to household solid fuel use in India, with a view to inform health research priorities for household air pollution and facilitate being able to address air pollution within an integrated rural–urban framework in the future.
Highlights
Three billion people worldwide use biomass and coal as their primary source of energy for cooking and heating
The comparative risk assessment (CRA) exercise conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2002 estimates that exposure to indoor smoke from solid fuels may be annually responsible for about 1.6 million premature deaths in developing countries and 2.6% of the global burden of disease [4]
We used the following keywords in addition to the ones cited above for abstraction of health effects related information Á chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), acute lower respiratory infection (ALRI), lung cancer, cataracts, asthma, tuberculosis (TB), low birth weight, and still birth
Summary
Three billion people worldwide use biomass (wood, charcoal, crop residues, and dung) and coal as their primary source of energy for cooking and heating (coal is common in China and biomass in all nations including India where solid fuels are used). To our knowledge, a comprehensive consolidation of the available information at the national level has not been attempted Based on this rationale, we undertook a review exercise aimed at summarizing the results reported in a large range of research studies conducted in India, to identify research gaps and inform health research priorities. Information from published literature was retrieved using a simple search strategy that while being systematic would, not qualify to be labeled as a formal systematic review Despite this limitation, the search provided important insights from major studies and allowed a synthesis of specific research recommendations that may be useful for researchers/ organizations interested in framing/funding collaborative research initiatives
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