The Environmental Significance of Airborne Diseases Due to the Use of Household Biomass Fuels

Department of Environment & Energy, Sejong University, Seoul 143-747, Korea

*Corresponding Author:

Ki-Hyun Kim
Department of Environment & Energy
Sejong University, Seoul 143-747, Korea
Tel: +82-2-3408-3233
Fax: +82-2-3408-4320
E-mail: khkim@sejong.ac.kr

Received Date: June 06, 2012; Accepted Date: June 06, 2012; Published Date: June 08, 2012

Citation: Kim KH (2012) The Environmental Significance of Airborne Diseases Due to the Use of Household Biomass Fuels. Air Water Borne Dis 1:e111. doi:10.4172/2167-7719.1000e111

Copyright: © 2012 Kim KH. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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To date, approximately half the world’s population and up to 90% of rural households in developing countries rely on biomass fuels in the form of wood, coal, animal dung, and crop residues [1]. As many deleterious substances are produced from food materials via cooking, various types of pollutants are also emitted due to the incomplete combustion of these fuels. These pollutants include Particulate matter (PM) and the associated components (metals, Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), etc) as well as numerous gaseous constituents (e.g., carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, nitrogen dioxide, volatile organic compounds) [2-6]. As such, the use of household biomass fuel can act as the source of Indoor air pollution (IAP) through which various forms of pollutants are released.

Exposure to IAP may be responsible for nearly 2 million excess deaths in developing countries and for some 4% of the global burden of disease [7]. Children are particularly vulnerable to IAP because their metabolic pathways are underdeveloped and immature [8]. It is thus imperative to acquire the basic knowledge concerning the diverse health risks associated with cooking emissions in relation with the use of coal and biomass fuels. In light of environmental significance of IAP stemming from the household use of biofuel and its potential health risks, it is very important to be able to establish various policies and prevention strategies to handle this issue properly.

References

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