We need better reporting of household air pollution
Household dwellers, who are exposed to toxic fumes, don’t realise the economic costs of such exposure
The recent surge in air pollution levels in New Delhi has once again attracted a lot of attention. In normal conditions, this level of exposure to air pollution — particularly PM 2.5 — witnessed in the capital is a daily instance in households where solid biomass is burnt in poorly ventilated spaces. It is estimated that household air pollution (HAP) related to cooking causes 1.3 million premature deaths in India (WHO, 2018). It also leads to almost 30% of the ambient air pollution in the country. One of the major constituents of HAP is PM 2.5, which affects local and regional climate change, and can cause environmental degradation.
Owing to these problems and to realise India’s voluntary commitment as part of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the government introduced the Ujjwala Yojana, which aims at provisioning cleaner liquefied petroleum gas cylinders to poor households. So far, over 50 million households have benefitted from the scheme. Still, there are households that use cook stove and cooking fuel.
In a recent study prepared by the Automotive Research Association of India and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), it has been highlighted that close to 3 million households in the National Capital Region (NCR) use biomass fuel. It is noteworthy that the use of traditional stoves and burning of solid biomass is not restricted to cooking only. It is also used for multiple purposes such as space heating, keeping the flies/insects away in the animal sheds, warming food/water for preparing an animal feed. While all of this is known for a long time, the wider focus has been given on replacing the cook stove that is used for cooking food only. This leaves the issue of HAP unaddressed. Exposure to HAP is detrimental to health. But household dwellers, who are regularly exposed to toxic fumes, do often not realise this or associated economic implications. At the macro level, the health impacts of HAP are estimates, which are generated using scientifically proven models. There is a need for exploring ways to strengthen the model by feeding data that is more reflective of the insights at the grassroots. In the current paradigm, we don’t gather large scale micro level data pertaining to air pollution-related disease burden at short intervals.
This can be realised by introducing institutional mechanisms for reporting HAP/air pollution-related disease burden. Having a more robust estimate of HAP/ air pollution-related health impact will enable in setting a baseline that can be leveraged in the long run to determine the benefits of mega energy access initiatives in any particular region.