Internal Air Pollution in Developing Countries: Magnitude

As you may note, the subject for my paper has changed.  I realized as I really delved into the research that I was having trouble finding concrete indicators of magnitude.  Additionally, I looked ahead and found myself at a loss when it came to solutions.  I am no environmental engineer and so had no idea how to fix the problem of trichloromethanes in our drinking water.  Thus, my paper topic has changed to something I find very interesting and one that I know with have a wealth of research for me: Indoor Air Pollution(IAP) in Developing Countries.  Most of the time, IAP is forgotten behind the daunting efforts put in place to improve water sanitation. IAP leads to overwhelming death and, therefore, should also be a focus of public health policy makers and activists.

With a change in topic, my problem statement has changed as well.  My new problem statement is as follows:

For the past decade, indoor air pollutant levels in developing countries where solid biomass constitutes the main fuel source have exceeded the WHO and EPA recommended limit by twenty times.

With these extremely high levels of indoor air pollution comes extremely high levels of associated diseases and even mortality.  In fact, according to the WHO, since 200, internal air pollution has been the cause of approximately 1.6 million deaths a year.  In other words, around 3-4% of all deaths around the world can be linked to IAP (Oluwole, 2012).  As can be seen by these numbers, indoor air pollution is a major health problem. 

The problem of indoor air pollution is mostly found in rural parts of developing nations and not developed nations, so our focus should be directed there.  90% of rural households in developing countries use solid biomass as their only source of energy for activities such as cooking.  It has been noted that in these rural households, internal air pollution levels exceed EPA standards daily and by ten to twentyfold (Bruce, 2002).  Also, it has been noted that approximately 80% of all global exposure to particulate matter happens inside the home in developing nations (Ezzati, 2001). 

Now we have come full circle back to the problem statement.  Indoor air pollution is very high inside of rural households in developing countries.  This air pollution leads to great morbidity and mortality.  In essence, the magnitude of the problem reaches across the world and affects a great amount of the world population.

The data presented most likely come from active surveillance.  With little to no health infrastructure in most of these developing nations, public health data are sparse and therefore many studies must be done by visiting the nations and doing studies there.  Given the nature of these studies, the majority of the data presented will be estimations.  They cannot reach out to every single person in every developing nation.  They can, however, obtain data from multiple locations in multiple developing nations and generalize it to the whole population.  Still the data are very sound because they have come from direct measurements.

Ezzati, M., Kammen, D.M. (2001) Indoor air pollution from biomass combustion and acute respiratory infections in Kenya: an exposure-response study. The Lancet 358: 619-624.

Oluwole, O., Otaniyi, O.O., Ana, G.A., Olopade, C.O. (2012) Indoor air pollution from biomass fuels: a major health hazard in developing countries. J Public Health.

Bruce, N., Perez-Padilla, R., Albalak, R. (2002) The health effects of indoor air pollution exposure in developing countries. Geneva, Switzerland: WHO.