352 A Healthy Home
Indoor Air Pollution
When people burn wood, dung, coal, charcoal, gas,
and crop wastes indoors for cooking or heating
without good ventilation, smoke fills the house.
This smoke contains harmful gases (fumes) and tiny
particulates (soot) that cause breathing problems and
other illnesses. Headaches, dizziness, and fatigue are
often followed by serious illnesses such as asthma,
pneumonia, bronchitis, or lung cancer. Indoor air
pollution from smoking fires also increases the risk of
getting TB (see page 356).
Women and children are the most exposed to
harmful cooking smoke. When pregnant women are
exposed to a lot of smoke every day, it can cause
their children to be born very small, grow slowly,
and have difficulty learning later on. In some cases,
it can even cause children to be born dead.
To reduce indoor air pollution, you can:
• improve ventilation (see pages 352 to 354).
• improve stoves (see pages 359 to 362, and
Resources).
When men cook more,
they will become better
cooks and burn less food.
• use cleaner fuels (see page 362 to 364, and Chapter 23).
• use safer cleaning products (see page 358, and 372 to 374).
• reduce air pollution from outdoors (see Chapter 20).
Poor ventilation harms health
Ventilation is the way fresh air moves into a room or building, and how old
and polluted air moves out. If a house has poor ventilation, smoke and polluted
air stay inside. Poor ventilation also traps moisture in the house, causing
dampness and mold. The easiest way to reduce indoor air pollution is to improve
ventilation. To know if your house has poor ventilation, look for these signs:
• Smoke stays in the house, or the ceilings are black from cooking or
heating smoke.
• Moisture collects on windows or walls.
• Clothing, bedding, or walls grow mold.
• Bad smells from toilets or sewers stay in the house.
If you cook with gas and often suffer from dizziness and confusion, this may be
a sign of poor ventilation or a gas leak.
A Community Guide to Environmental Health 2012