AIR

According to Ayurveda, Air is one of the five elements this entire Universe is made up of (out of Air, Water, Earth, Fire and Ether). Hence, the quality of air would be a direct determinant of quality of everything in this universe and hence that of living-beings as well. In order to improve the quality of life humans learnt how to seek cooperation from mother nature. But the very desire of making accelerated material progress man has started exploiting the bounties of nature as a result of which humanity is surrounded by such irreversible changes in nature which is now making the existence of life on this planet vulnerable. Air pollution is once such exploitation where humans have altered the composition of the air by adulterating it with undesirable pollutants like sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, oxides of nitrogen, particulate matter (dust, shoot etc.). The problem of air pollution started raising its head in post industrial-revolution era. The prime mover of rapid industrialization,that is, the fossil fuel were burnt indiscriminately in boilers, engines , power houses etc. leading to increase in the concentration of afore mentioned gases in the atmosphere. This has further led to several health-related ailments in human beings.

But one may ask, how are these factors responsible for contaminating the air in our villages since most of the industrial activities are confined to rural set-up only ? As a matter of fact the most important source of air pollution and hence a degraded quality of air in rural areas is the combustion of bio-mass based fuel in the hearths of village households. A significant proportion of village kitchen-stoves are being run on wood, cow-dung cakes and dried agricultural residue. This has got a direct impact on the health of the women and children of villages as it is they who spend good amount of time exposed to the dangerous gases produced while burning of these fuels.

"Findings - Results revealed that cow dung is the most polluting fuel with maximum emissions of PM10, PM 2.5, VOCs, CO, NO2 and Benzene followed by wood and kerosene. Interestingly kerosene combustion emits the highest amount of PAHs. Emissions for all the fuels show the presence of carcinogenic PAHs which could be a serious health concern. The composition of LPG/PNG leads to reductions of pollutants because of better combustion process. LPG which is largely propane and butane, and PNG which is 90 per cent methane prove to be healthier fuels. Based on the results, the authors suggest that technological intervention is required to replace the traditional stoves with improved fuel efficient stoves. "

http://www.teriin.org/index.php?option=com_publication&task=details&sid=1515&theme=

Now, so what should be the approach to address this issue. As discussed in previous post, the first activity should be to measure the extent of problem. So what could be the possible parameters in this case to measure. They could be:

1. Percentage of household using bio-gas based fuel for cooking.

2. Average duration of time for which an individual is exposed to the exhaust gases (cooking man-hours avg.)

3. Cost incurred on fuel (daily/monthly). This parameter would impact the choice of alternatives.

4. Number of cases per household of ailments like asthma, bronchitis, eye-problems or any other health issue caused by smoke.

5. Out-of-pocket expenditure on medical assistance for these ailments.

6. Type of fuel used; wood, cow-dung cakes, agricultural residue like bagasse etc.

Coming to solutions now: 

The approach could be

a) Reduce the time of exposure, i.e., make cooking faster---> Pressure Cookers, Metal Utensils for better heat transfer instead of earthen ware.

b) Among the many alternatives of bio-mass based fuel use the one which has more heat content, lesser moisture---> Sun dried wood, bagasse, brickets

c) Eliminate the exposure of humans to flu gases---> provision of chimneys, smokeless chulhas

d) Replace the fuel itself with cleaner fuels---> LPG, Solar Cooker, Electric stoves, Kerosene Stoves 

GoI could promote manufacturing of bio-diesel, bio-ethanol from the same source of bio-mass based fuels. Both would be a better fuel than the bio-mass itself.

to be continued...