As of 2002 it was estimated that 2.7% of all global disease can be attributed to some form of indoor air pollution.  This problem is especially rampant among impoverished populations and affects the women who traditionally do the cooking.

Research shows that rural women in Africa, Asia, and the Americas can spend anywhere from 3-7 hours a day cooking over a fire composed of coal or similar heavy biomass fuels that put off extreme levels of smoke and pollutants.

Infants are also severely affected, since in many native cultures they are constantly strapped to the mother’s back and therefore breathe large amounts of polluted smoke from early infancy.

Indoor smoke can contain a variety of damaging substances: carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, sulphur oxide (from coal), formaldehyde, cancer-causing carcinogens such as benzopyrene and benzene, and droplets or particles of dangerous chemicals.

All of this goes straight into the lungs and can cause several major health problems among affected groups. Most troubling is the impact it has on innocent young infants, since indoor air pollution is responsible for severe issues like stillbirths, infant death in the first week of life, low birth weight, chronic middle ear infection, acute upper respiratory infections, and tuberculosis.

Small children are at risk for some of these diseases as well as acute lower respiratory infections, one of which is pneumonia. ALRI is the leading cause of death worldwide for children under age 5, killing over 2 million each year. The mothers of these children have their own susceptibilities; indoor air pollution most often afflicts women with chronic bronchitis or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and it has been found that women who burn coal fires also have a high rate of lung cancer.

Other health problems that can affect people of all ages and genders include cataracts and/or blindness, asthma, upper airway cancer, laryngeal cancer, and cardiovascular disease.  Essentially, indoor air pollution needlessly maims and kills a lot of people.

If it has been conclusively proven that indoor air pollution is so harmful, why do people continue to burn dangerous fuels inside their homes? Native cultures and a lifestyle of poverty have a lot to do with it. In many areas people live trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty which forces them to resort to biomass fuels, like wood or animal dung, because they cannot afford anything else-these fuels are readily available and either cheap or free.

Conversely, they must devote several hours each day collecting the necessary fuel reserves, which limits time that might have been spent working to earn money or pursuing an education. In addition to this, when a household is dependent on inferior light sources they lost opportunities for earning or educational activities outside of daylight hours.

These practices also encourage deforestation and are having a devastating impact on the environment, particularly in fragile ecosystems like the Amazon Rainforest.

The solutions to indoor air pollution will mostly have to come from outside sources, as more advanced societies intervene to provide rural areas with adequate cooking equipment such as new stoves that can burn biomass fuel more efficiently and with better ventilation. Alternative fuels, which include petroleum, biogas, electricity and solar power, could also be introduced.

Adding chimneys, smoke hoods and windows will provide better ventilation to the household and may also improve health. But most importantly, education will help to change behavior patterns that will help to dramatically reduce the health issues and impacts of indoor air pollution.