{"id":12181,"date":"2018-12-17T16:39:16","date_gmt":"2018-12-17T11:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aqi.in\/blog\/indoor-air-pollution-in-india\/"},"modified":"2018-12-17T16:39:16","modified_gmt":"2018-12-17T11:09:16","slug":"indoor-air-pollution-in-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aqi.in\/blog\/en-in\/indoor-air-pollution-in-india\/","title":{"rendered":"Indoor Air Pollution in India: Implications On Your Health"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000;\">Indoor air pollution is slowly degrading indoor air quality with the use of chemicals and other harmful substances commonly found in household products. Definitely, these substances are 10 times worse than the outdoor air pollution and most of us are not even aware of this fact.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000;\">Indoor air pollution only takes place because potential air pollutants build up indoors more than the outer space. Naturally, the health impacts of house air pollution are more than the outdoor pollution.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; color: #000000;\">Indoor Air Pollution in India<\/span><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000;\">The sources of indoor air pollution are mainly due to combustion, building materials, asbestos, pesticides, volatile organic matter, tobacco smoke to name a few.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-893 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.aqi.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/indoor-air-pollution-greenubuntu.jpg\" alt=\"indoor air pollution in India\" width=\"1000\" height=\"350\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000;\">In India, combustion products of biomass fuels contribute most of the indoor air pollution. Out of 1.3 billion people in India, below mentioned percentage people use fuel for cooking as per the statistics provided by the WHO:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000;\">49% use firewood<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000;\">9% use cow dung cake<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000;\">5% use coal or charcoal<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000;\">9% use kerosene<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000;\">6% use LPG<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000;\">1% use electricity<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000;\">4% use biogas<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000;\">5% use other means<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Also, read<\/span>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aqi.in\/blog\/delhi-air-pollution-is-worsening-capital-residents-health\/\">Delhi Air Pollution: How It Is Worsening By Every Day<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; color: #000000;\"><strong>Rising Problem of Indoor Air Pollution\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000;\">A study on quantifying exposures to respiratory particulate matter found concentrations of particulate matter ranging from 500 to 2,000 mg\/m3\u00a0during cooking in biomass-using households. Average 24-h exposures ranged from 82 \u00b1 39 mg\/m3\u00a0for those using clean fuels, to 231 \u00b1 109 mg\/m3\u00a0for those who used biomass fuel for cooking. In indoor air, carbon monoxide levels during cooking by dung, wood, coal, kerosene, and LPG were found to be 144, 156, 94, 108, and 14 mg\/m3, respectively. The indoor levels of total polyaromatic hydrocarbons during use of dung, wood, coal, kerosene, and LPG were 3.56, 2.01, 0.55, 0.23, and 0.13 mg\/m3\u00a0of air, respectively. The formaldehyde means levels were 670, 652, 109, 112, and 68 mg\/m3, respectively, for dung, wood, coal, kerosene, and LPG.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_900\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-900\" style=\"width: 1019px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-900 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.aqi.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Blog-header-Indoor-Air-Pollution.png\" alt=\"indoor air pollution in India\" width=\"1019\" height=\"465\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-900\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif;\">Main culprits that are commonly found indoors<\/span><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h4 style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; color: #000000;\"><strong>Effects of Indoor Air Pollution on Health<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; color: #000000; font-size: 12pt;\">Did you know the ill effects of indoor air pollution caused about 2 million premature deaths a year?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; color: #000000; font-size: 12pt;\">It is way more than the death caused by pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lung cancer.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000;\">The incomplete combustion products of biomass fuels include suspended particulate matter, carbon monoxide, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, polyorganic matter, formaldehyde, etc., which have adverse effects on health. The combustion of coal results in the production of oxides of sulfur, arsenic, and fluorine. <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aqi.in\/blog\/household-cleaning-products-indoor-air-pollution\/\">Pollutants such as aldehydes, volatile, and semivolatile organic compounds<\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000;\"> are produced from resins, waxes, polishing materials, cosmetics, and binders. Lastly; biological pollutants like dust mites, molds, pollen, and infectious agents produced in stagnant water, mattresses, carpets, and humidifiers to pollute indoor air.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; color: #000000; font-size: 12pt;\">Pregnant women, young children, and senior citizens are the most affected groups as they spend the majority of their time in the home. Indoor air pollution increases the potential of health risks such as respiratory illness, and acute respiratory tract infection. Stillbirth, lung cancer, leukemia are health issues which are directly attributed from inhaling indoor polluted air. There have been studies which are proof that the effect of wood smoke also causes cardiovascular health issues.<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aqi.in\/blog\/pollution-is-our-your-biggest-enemy-what-step-are-you-taking\/\">What You Can Do?<\/a><\/span><\/h5>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000;\">With the increase in indoor air pollution in India and its association with an increased number in morbidity and mortality, we need to access the exposure levels of the indoor air pollutants. At the same time, effective measure against air pollution, educating people about the various levels of pollution, change in the fuel consumption, proper designing of household energy and house, and dedicated approach to promote public health is the only need of the hour.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">For more stories on pollution and Air Quality Index, visit<\/span> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aqi.in\">www.aqi.in<\/a> <span style=\"color: #000000;\">and get the latest information.<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/play.google.com\/store\/apps\/details?id=com.aqi.data&amp;hl=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1210\" src=\"https:\/\/www.aqi.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/AQI-India-App.jpg\" alt=\"AQI India App\" width=\"820\" height=\"312\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Indoor air pollution is slowly degrading indoor air quality with the use of chemicals and other harmful substances commonly found&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":12187,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3464],"tags":[3617,3538,3539,3589,3540,3542,3543,3593,3720,3513,3729],"class_list":["post-12181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-indoor-air-quality-en-in","tag-air-en-in","tag-air-monitoring-en-in","tag-air-pollution-in-india-en-in","tag-air-quality-en-in","tag-air-quality-index-en-in","tag-aqi-en-in","tag-aqi-india-en-in","tag-delhi-en-in","tag-health-en-in","tag-indoor-air-pollution-en-in","tag-indoor-air-pollution-in-india-en-in"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aqi.in\/blog\/en-in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aqi.in\/blog\/en-in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aqi.in\/blog\/en-in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aqi.in\/blog\/en-in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aqi.in\/blog\/en-in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.aqi.in\/blog\/en-in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aqi.in\/blog\/en-in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aqi.in\/blog\/en-in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aqi.in\/blog\/en-in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aqi.in\/blog\/en-in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}