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Daily average exposures to carbon monoxide from combustion of biomass fuels in rural households of Haryana, India

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Abstract

Exposure to harmful by-products of combustion arising from the use of biomass fuels for cooking and heating in rural areas of developing countries results in poor air quality and is responsible for millions of deaths yearly. Little formal quantification and measurement of carbon monoxide (CO), one of these harmful air pollutants, have been performed in rural areas of North India. In the current study, we measured exposure to CO from cooking and heating in seven households using biomass and liquid petroleum gas (LPG) in open and closed kitchens. Exposures to CO ranged from 4.81 to 7.01, 0.20 to 1.81, and 0.02 to 0.75 mg m−3 for households cooking with biomass, cooking with LPG, and for households in which no cooking occurred, respectively. It was observed that the CO concentration in biomass-only households is much higher (78%) than in LPG-only households (14%). We found exposures in closed kitchens approximately two times higher than in open kitchens. Location of the kitchen (i.e., open vs. closed) was the most important determinant of exposure of primary cooks to CO in this geography.

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Acknowledgements

First and foremost, we thank the participating cooks and households in Bajada Pahari for their patience and assistance. We also acknowledge the contributions of other members of the INCLEN field team. This work was carried out with support from the EPA-G2012-STAR-E1 (Measurements and Modeling for Quantifying Air Quality) project. We are thankful to INCLEN, New Delhi, India, and University of California, Berkeley, USA, for providing us the required funding to complete this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Marwadi University, Rajkot, 360003, India

    Sneha Gautam

  2. The INCLEN Trust International, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-I, New Delhi, 110020, India

    Sneha Gautam, Ankit Yadav & Narendra Arora

  3. Division of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA

    Ajay Pillarisetti & Kirk Smith

  4. Department of Mathematics, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, Kharagpur, 721302, India

    Deepak Singh

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  1. Sneha Gautam
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  2. Ajay Pillarisetti
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  5. Narendra Arora
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Correspondence to Sneha Gautam.

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Gautam, S., Pillarisetti, A., Yadav, A. et al. Daily average exposures to carbon monoxide from combustion of biomass fuels in rural households of Haryana, India. Environ Dev Sustain 21, 2567–2575 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-018-0131-1

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