The Health Risk Factors Of Lack Of Proper And Regular Fuel Availability

People under the poverty line are mostly energy poor too. It is estimated that approximately two thirds of these are women, quite a few of whom live in female-headed rural households. It is essential to keep in mind that men and women have different energy requirements and may have different notions of sustainable livelihoods. Moreover, women and men have dissimilar access to resources and decision-making. Women’s access to decision-making within the household and community is constrained, limiting their ability to influence practices and resource division, one of them being energy.

Women cook all the meals for the household, with children assisting her with small chores. They use biomass for cooking, which has a number of repercussions for woman, children and all the members present inside the house. The fuel quality is low, and when burnt it gives off quantities of smoke and particulates leading to indoor air pollution, which has severe negative effects on health pollution. It specially hampers women and children’s health due to inefficient combustion of traditional energy sources leading to premature deaths. Das et.al, 2017 in their study on the impact of household air pollution on health confirmed that indoor pollution is related to various cardiopulmonary health evils, including chronic obstructive pulmonary, disease acute coronary syndrome, cardiovascular ailments and blood pressure.

The emissions are also associated with cancers of various types, mainly lung, mouth, pharynx etc. A recent literature have found associations between long-term exposure to PM2.5 among adults (>65 years) and neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s diseases. Women’s exposure to firewood fumes during pregnancy’s third trimester is related to school-going children’s less scores in neuropsychological tests. Moreover, there are problems of phlegm, dry cough, wheezing, sneezing, chest stiffness, bronchial disorders, backache, and eye discomfort when exposed to high heat while cooking. This trend is mainly prevalent in the Asian and African countries. In addition, these unsafe cooking fuels are accompanied by the absence of proper ventilation, which aggravates the problem. A lack of decent ventilation or a chimney locks the smoke inside the house for a longer time leading to much more inhalation of these harmful gases.

Mostly, very young children along with women are the main victims and school going children are also victims though to a lesser extent.Another related aspect is the school absenteeism. Due to lack of proper and regular fuel availability, women and children have to often go to nearby forests to collect firewood and have to spent 2-3 hours on each trip few times a week. This was revealed in a recent survey of a remote village in Ladakh. The interview of the local people revealed that they require firewood for cooking as well as for heating up their homes. Ladakh is situated at 14000 feet above sea level and the temperature goes down to -20 degrees. Hence, they require fuel to heat up their homes all through the year specially during winters. Besides this, they use kerosene to light lamps after sunset which also generate harmful fumes.