Inhalation of smoke from cooking activities in Katanga, a health burden among women users of charcoal and firewood

Abstract

This study focused on the Inhalation of smoke from culinary activities in Katanga. It was carried out over a period of approximately 4 years. The study population consisted of women whose average age was 37.8 (16) years. On the one hand, 119 rural women (permanent users of coal in the Futuka village and 121 urban women (FU) in the Vallée urban district of the city of Lubumbashi were approached and selected. The fundamental question was whether prolonged or sporadic exposure to smoke from cooking activities could be an exposure factor to the risk of respiratory infections. Following the investigations made and the multiple functional explorations, we arrived at the confirmation of this hypothesis . In view of the results obtained, we found that the frequency of use of these biomasses oscillated respectively between 63.6% in town and 75% in rural areas. In the two female categories considered, the rates of cough and morning and usual sputum were, in almost all cases, higher among women from Futuka than among those from the Vallée district. Concerning the crisis of breathlessness and difficulty breathing, we noticed that for the three parameters observed (morning awakening with difficulty breathing, shortness of breath at rest during the day and shortness of breath after intense effort), the women users of the Vallée district were the more affected. For the values, apart from the Tiffnaud ratio (FEV1/FVC%), the functional exploration using the spirometer showed overall that almost all the spirometric parameters led to statistically significant differences between urban women (FU ) of the Vallée district and rural (FR) of the Futuka village. These are the forced vital capacity (FVC% pred with a p=0.034), the peak expiratory flow (PEF with a p value of 0.000) and the expiratory volume at the first second (FEV1% pred with a p value of 0.000).