‘Air in house often 10 times deadlier than outside’

NEW DELHI:A large part of India’s population would have lived seven months longer and contributed over a thousand healthy life years to the economy if it wasn’t exposed to high household air pollution levels in 2017, a study published in The Lancet Planetary Health journal on Thursday said.

According to the India State-Level Disease Burden Initiative’s study on the impact of air pollution on death and the disease burden in India for 2017, at least 50% of the country’s population is dependent on solid fuels like wood, dung, agricultural residue, coal and charcoal for cooking and heating.

In states with comparatively low social and development status like Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha, over 75% population is dependent on solid fuels.

The impact of household air pollution on life expectancy was found to be the highest in Rajasthan where the exposed population could lose a year, followed by Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh where it is expected to lose nine months.

The disease burden from solid fuel combustion indoors includes acute lower respiratory tract infections, ischaemic heart disease, strokes and cataracts, among others.

Of 1.24 million premature deaths due to air pollution, 0.48 million were due to exposure to household air pollution or solid fuel use in 2017, according to the study.

The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) was launched in May 2016 to provide free LPG connections to women from below poverty line families. But it was too early for the impact of the scheme to be seen in the 2017 data used for the study.

The authors of the study say exposure to PM2.5 pollutants in the kitchen can often be 10 times higher than outdoor air pollution levels.

“It can be anywhere between 200 to 700 micrograms per cubic metre. We couldn’t capture the impact of PMUY because we used 2017 data, but having an LPG connection doesn’t guarantee LPG use. So we can’t wish away the problem of household air pollution, which is being felt even in states like Kerala or Tamil Nadu where outdoor pollution levels may be comparatively lower,” said Kalpana Balakrishnan from the department of environmental health engineering, Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research in Chennai, who is a co-author of the study.

But the premature death rates from exposure to household air pollution are marginally lower than those from outdoor air pollution in India mainly because of an increase in LPG use.

Balakrishnan was part of a World Health Organization study in 2000 that showed that the air pollution exposure contribution from household pollution was far higher than from outdoor air pollution. Household air pollution exacerbates the health impacts of ambient air pollution already being suffered by a lot of northern and low socio-economic status states.

The Access to Clean Cooking Energy and Electricity – Survey of States (ACCESS 2018) conducted by the Council on Environment, Energy and Water found that households using LPG as their primary cooking fuel have increased from 14% to 37% since 2015.

But LPG continues to be the second fuel for the majority of rural households in Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

Although the PMUY reimburses LPG connection charges (~1,600) for women of BPL households, and oil marketing companies provide an equated monthly instalment option to cover the cost of the cooking stove and first refill, the scheme has failed to convert a majority of people to primary LPG users because they find LPG less affordable.

“Common logic dictates that using LPG rather than solid fuels would reduce household air pollution. And, the Ujjwala scheme is providing access to LPG. That said, we need to scientifically quantify whether there is any impact and we are doing those studies,” said Dr Balram Bhargava, director general, Indian Council of Medical Research.