KATHMANDU, Mar. 26: Although indoor pollution has been responsible for causing many diseases being the fourth largest cause of death in Nepal, which relies on 86 per cent of traditional resources out of the total energy consumption, it has not been included in the country's priority.

Harmful gases such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, sulphur dioxide emanate when fire wood, cow-dung and agro residues are burnt while cooking food.

As such toxic gases remain inside the house for long, it is 110 times more harmful than the pollution outdoor.

The smoke that comes out while making fire when enters through the respiratory tract into the body and causes the anti-body to deteriorate and causes various respiratory diseases including asthma, cough, pneumonia, cataract, and tuberculosis and is likely of catching dangerous diseases like heart disease, problems of blood transfusion and cancer.

In rural areas where no clean energy has reached, the oven is in one corner of the house where there is no window and if there is one it is closed and no smoke can be ventilated.

In high hilly and Himalayan regions, windows and doors are always closed as it is cold most of the time and fire wood is burnt 24 hours a day.

The smoke particles in the houses can be 10 to 100 times more than the standards specified by WHO. Some 99 per cent of Nepalese homes have only one room for cooking food, study-room for children and bed room and all the family members are easily victimised by the smoke.

Most affected are women working in the kitchen and their accompanying child. Rural women spend 90 per cent of time inside the house while cooking. They spend 4-5 hours daily in kitchen and are infected with diseases from smoke.

Fifteen percent of women not smoking have also problems of chronic hooping cough, said senior doctor Mrigendra Raj Pandey.

The pregnant women have the complexity in delivery because of smoke, the child would die in infancy, or born disabled, and mentally retarded, said Pandey. The remote hilly districts are more affected by this problem than the cities.

In a study conducted by the World Bank in India, 50 per cent of women working in smoke had a problem of pre-natal deaths. Likewise, 500,000 children under five died of the smoke inside houses.

Some 2400 million people of the world use firewood for cooking and heating. WHO says that 2.4 million people die of air pollution each year. Of them, 1.6 million or one in 20 seconds dies of in-house pollution. In South Asia, some 150,000 people die of air pollution, according to WHO.

Some 70 per cent of the people of the world are compelled to inhale polluted air and 20 per cent have less polluted and only ten percent have clean air, WHO says.

A study of the Institute of Engineering Energy Study Centre says the quantity of toxic particles in smoke when Tuki kerosene lamp is lighted for six hours in a room would have 7.5 micrograms per cubic mililiters, whereas WHO standards does not allow more than 2.6 micrograms in 24 hours.

Some 10 percent of the kerosene imported in Nepal is used in Tuki lamps, said director of the centre Prof. Jagannath Shrestha, adding it is 12 times harmful than the standards, and a solar tuki is cheaper and a healthy option.

The Practical Action said much improvement has come in pollution in the house after a chimney was established in Gatlang village in Rasuwa. Local Lemba Tamang says there is now no problem of eye strain, and chest pain and the rooms of the house are very clean.

National representative of the organisation Achyut Luintel said they have gained much experience to lessen pollution inside houses in other remote areas from the experience of Rasuwa.

'We should prioritise lessening the impact even if not the dependency on kerosene', he says.

According to the Nepal Cancer Relief Organisation, one person in 72 percent of Nepalese houses smokes. Thirty three percent of the smoke goes inside the body and the rest is mixed in the air and affects other members of the family.

Two times nicotine, three times resin, and five times more carbon monoxide and 50 times cancer causing chemicals are found in the smoke sent by the person in air and the non-smokers have also to bear the effects, say doctors.

The poor are destined to be the victims of the problem of in-house pollution where no clean energy has reached.

The emphasis has to be on developing solar energy, bio-gas, improved oven and development of renewable energy technology and its extension by lessening the dependency on traditional energy to achieve the goals of the tenth plan and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to alleviate poverty.

Source: http://www.gorkhapatra.org.np/pageloader.php?file=2006/03/27/topstories/main10