ISSN 2375-1266
African Journal of Environmental and Waste Management ISSN: 2375-1266 Vol. 2 (6), pp. 151-157, June, 2014. © International Scholars Journals
Full length research paper
An investigation of risk factors associated with indoor air pollution in the low-income households of Aligarh city, India
*Iajuddin Biswas, Abdur Hamid Yunus and Hussan Rahman
Department of Geography, Andhra Pradesh Open University, Hyderabad, India.
*Corresponding author Email: drbiswas2007@ braou.ac.in
Accepted 4 May, 2015
Abstract
This paper seeks to investigate the risk factors associated with indoor air pollution in low income households. Cooking with traditional fuels leads to high levels of indoor air pollution, exposure of which increases the risk of various health problems. This study is based on primary sources of data collected with the help of questionnaire interviews from 533 low income households (earning Rs.5, 000 and less per month). Since women are responsible for cooking they were selected as respondents. This study investigates the major socio-economic factors including housing and cooking conditions, identification of risk factors and occurrence of associated diseases. The results show that most of the low income households were using traditional fuels and stoves, cooking in multipurpose room and VERANDA, in poorly ventilated cooking places and taking long hours for cooking. Thus, they were exposed to all the associated risk factors of indoor air pollution. They reported of the occurrence of associated diseases, like acute upper and lower respiratory infections, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, perinatal mortality, pulmonary tuberculosis, low birth weight, eye irritation and cataract etc. The study points to the need of creating awareness amongst the low income households.
Keywords: Indoor air pollution; traditional fuels; risk factors; diseases.