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Pilot Intervention of Improved Cook Stoves in Rural Areas: Assessment of Effects on Fuel Use, Smoke Emission and Health
Abstract
This study aims to explore the impact of improved cook stoves (ICS) on fuel expenditure (consumption), smoke emission, and health of women (cook) in rural households of Bangladesh. In the follow-up survey (January-March 2010), 1,569 households, constituting of both who received ICS immediately after baseline survey (July-September 2008) and who had refused to use any ICS, were selected for interview using a pre-tested structured questionnaire. [Research Monograph Series No. 53]. URL:[http://www.bracresearch.org/monographs/Monograph_53.pdf].
... Again the technical aspects were more on the designing of the stove where women complain about the stove design especially the one with a chimney to be limited to a specific cooking pan size hence not allowing the cooking of a large amount of food. The same reasons for maintaining traditional stoves and less frequent use of ICS were reported by [27,28]. In addition, it was revealed that once women want to cook for the large family they always go for the traditional stove which is flexible. ...
The aim of this study was to assess the adoption of ICS along the value chain. The existing studies have focused much on measuring adoption based on the user’s installation or purchase of the ICS and few have gone to the level of assessing other aspects along the ICS value chain. The argument of this paper is that adoption is a multidimensional concept that goes beyond the initial acquisition of the stove to the sustained use of the same. Using a cross-sectional study design data were collected from 294 households in two Districts of Kilimanjaro regions and were analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The findings show that at the lower levels of value chain i.e. promotion and distributions the efforts have been somehow successful since people are aware of ICS benefits and negative effects of using traditional fuels and stoves. In addition, various stove distributors and technicians are in place. On the other hand, the uptake is limited since only 26% of all households had ICS in place of which only 22.1% had functional stoves. The intensity of ICS use is very limited and households have not integrated the stove into household cooking behavior. The study concludes that the stoves program implementers have adopted a disintegrated approach that disconnects various levels of the value chain. The efforts are much concentrated at lowers levels with limited interventions to address challenges limiting uptake, the intensity of use and sustained adoption. The study recommends that a holistic and integrated approach that will facilitate ICS adoption along the value chain should be adopted. This approach will facilitate forward and backward communications on challenges facing each level of the value chain.
... In order to reduce the dependency of people on forests in terms of collection of fuelwood for daily cooking, over 100 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) along with government's 'Bangladesh Council of Scientific and Industrial Research' have developed and attempted to disseminate a variety of ICS models giving priority to the local needs since the early 1980s [23, 26,27]. Till now, fixed and portable, metal and clay, single and multiple pot, with and without chimney, and with and without grate ICS models have been designed and disseminated [28,29]. ...
Biomass energy is one of the most primary sources of energy for the poor people particularly for the forest dependent communities. Similarly, forest dependent communities in Bangladesh use different types of forest biomass energy (i.e., wood, trees, leaves, undergrowth and bamboo) as fuels in the traditional cooking stove which results on continuous forest destruction, incomplete combustion of fuels, and environmental and health problems to the users. To minimize the pressure on forest resources, ensuring efficient use of biomass fuels and conserving forest biodiversity, Bangladesh Forest Department with technical support from German Society for International Cooperation introduced improved cooking stoves (ICS) programme in the country’s protected areas (PAs). The present study has been carried out in a PA of northeastern Bangladesh to explore the importance of ICS in forest conservation, generating economic benefits, and as a whole, its potential role to climate change mitigation along with scope in carbon credits. A multistage random sampling method was applied to collect data from 120 ICS users by using a semi-structured questionnaire. Survey revealed that adoption of ICS has reduced consumption of about 0.249 Mg (Megagram) of biomass and saved an amount of USD 1219.5 per month per household (p = 0.000). Almost about 38% households reduced their entrance in the forest and the frequency of entrance drops to almost 69% per month compared to before using ICS (p = 0.000). The average savings of fuelwood per households per year is 3.035 Mg, reduced CO2 emission is more than 8 Mg and the total reduction of emission of all GHGs is almost about 9 Mg/HH/year CO2 equivalent. The study suggests that ICS generates substantial economic saving for the people living in and around of the PA and can play important role in carbon credits of USD 896.2, received by each household. The study suggested that this study will help government, donors, policymakers and academicians to design forest policy related to climate change mitigation.
... The lack of or insufficient access to clean, affordable, reliable energy carriers is a major obstacle to reduce poverty and to improve the conditions and standard of living for the majority of the world's population, thus hindering economic and social development [1][2][3][4]. Increasing access to sustainable and modern energy services will enable income generation; it will also reduce the time and drudgery of collecting fuel wood; support cleaner and more efficient cooking and heating options; and finally, it could also provide indoor lighting security at night, thus enabling children to study in the evenings [3,[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]]. Yet many in the world, especially in the developing countries, still have insufficient access to sustainable energy services. ...
Energy is crucial for a better quality of life and for sustainable human development. This has been demonstrated in previous chapters. It has been widely recognized that food and water security, productivity, health, education, climate change, and communication services are greatly affected by the quality and the quantity of energy services. The lack of or insufficient access to clean, affordable, reliable energy carriers is a major obstacle to reduce poverty and to improve the conditions and standard of living for the majority of the world's population, thus hindering economic and social development [1-4]. Increasing access to sustainable and modern energy services will enable income generation; it will also reduce the time and drudgery of collecting fuel wood; support cleaner and more efficient cooking and heating options; and finally, it could also provide indoor lighting security at night, thus enabling children to study in the evenings [3, 5-12]. Yet many in the world, especially in the developing countries, still have insufficient access to sustainable energy services. This chapter presents Improved Cook-Stoves (ICS) and domestic biogas plants as technological options to improve access to sustainable energy services at both the household and community levels. The relevance of the technology, its performances, impacts and dissemination are discussed.
... This can be tracked to several perceived technical limitations associated with the ICS. A study by Dey et al. (2012) found that among the factors hindering the use of ICS after adoption were technical shortfalls, including the inability of the stoves to accommodate large cooking pans, regular maintenance necessities, fuel options, and sociocultural aspects. It was also found that technical limitations were among the most important factors guiding the decision to not adopt an ICS (Massawe et al., 2014). ...
Traditional biomass is a major source of cooking and heating energy in Tanzania. Although Tanzanian energy policy insists on the need to diversify energy sources, the level of diversification at a household level is not well known. This study identified energy use patterns and their associated factors in Kilimanjaro Region of Tanzania. Specifically, the study identified the types of cooking fuels and stoves available and used by households, as well as how and why households combined various cooking fuels. The household survey was conducted in 294 randomly selected households in the districts of Rombo and Hai. We found that although biomass is becoming scarce, it is still a major source of cooking energy, combined with the traditional cooking stove. Only 10.2% of the households reported full-time use of improved biomass cookstoves (ICS). The rest combined ICS with the traditional stove, threatening the sustainability of the biomass resource. It was found that 15% of ICS used by households were abandoned due to various technical flaws. Factors like woodlot ownership, kitchen location, electric grid connection, quality of living, and sources of firewood were associated with partial switching of households to either transition fuels or cleaner fuels. We conclude that energy use patterns in this region demonstrate a partial switching of fuel source, because some households use transition fuels or cleaner fuels combined with firewood. Fuel diversification focused more on cooking with biomass than moving to cleaner fuels. This implies that biomass will continue to be a major source of cooking fuels for Tanzanian households and, hence, ICS remains the best solution. For ICS to have a broad impact and achieve more widespread use, it is necessary to address some technical problems associated with ICS. The government of Tanzania should revisit the cost of alternative energy sources like LPG to improve their affordability for the masses.
In every developing country it is a major challenge for government to ensure clean energy for every household. Bangladesh today faces a different future than it did decades ago when relatively abundant natural gas seemed to be the key to prosperity. In this study we try to find out the limitations of traditional cook stoves & its harmful effect on the environment. We also try to minimize these problems by promoting the use of ICS (improved cook stove). In Bangladesh most of the people depends on solid fuel for cooking which results deforestation. By acknowledging the potential of renewable energy technologies and associated energy storage, Bangladesh could possibly meet its unprecedented energy demand. It’s a major challenge for the government of Bangladesh to provide peoples access to clean energy. According to Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics 2012, 80% people live in rural areas and 20% in urban areas resulting almost the same household percentage. Biomass accounts for 68% of primary energy consumption, and around 90% of household energy needs which indicates that only about 10% of Bangladeshis have access to modern fuels. In each country a significant amount of energy is required for the household activities. But the amount of energy consumption can be reduced by using improved cooking system & advanced cooking system (ACS). In Bangladesh various types of ICS has been developed & designed by government & private companies, development organizations & NGO’s. Significant amount of research & development has been done of ICS. These ICS are environment friendly and cause minimum health hazard. If we can replace the traditional stoves with improved cook stoves a lot amount of energy can be saved. This will minimize the black carbon (soot) emission to the environment & also minimize the health hazard from indoor air pollution (IAP). Successful promotion of these ICS will decrease the pressure on household energy sector.
The book analyzes energy technologies, business models and policies to promote sustainable development. It proposes a set of recommendations for further activities and networking on access to energy and renewable energies and promotes an integrated approach to sustainable resource management. The book discusses access to energy, as a precondition for socio-economic progress. It depicts the global dimension of the challenge in terms of access to electricity and other forms of energy in developing countries. The three main interlinked topics related to energy and sustainable growth are separately discussed: appropriate technologies for modern energy services, business models for the development of new energy markets, and policies to support new energy systems. The description of activities and programmes of some public and private Italian stakeholders is also included. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2013. All rights are reserved.
A critical review was conducted of the quantitative literature linking indoor air pollution from household use of biomass fuels with acute respiratory infections in young children, which is focused on, but not confined to, acute lower respiratory infection and pneumonia in children under two years in less developed countries. Biomass in the form of wood, crop residues, and animal dung is used in more than two fifths of the world's households as the principal fuel.
Medline and other electronic databases were used, but it was also necessary to secure literature from colleagues in less developed countries where not all publications are yet internationally indexed.
The studies of indoor air pollution from household biomass fuels are reasonably consistent and, as a group, show a strong significant increase in risk for exposed young children compared with those living in households using cleaner fuels or being otherwise less exposed. Not all studies were able to adjust for confounders, but most of those that did so found that strong and significant risks remained.
It seems that the relative risks are likely to be significant for the exposures considered here. Since acute lower respiratory infection is the chief cause of death in children in less developed countries, and exacts a larger burden of disease than any other disease category for the world population, even small additional risks due to such a ubiquitous exposure as air pollution have important public health implications. In the case of indoor air pollution in households using biomass fuels, the risks also seem to be fairly strong, presumably because of the high daily concentrations of pollutants found in such settings and the large amount of time young children spend with their mothers doing household cooking. Given the large vulnerable populations at risk, there is an urgent need to conduct randomised trials to increase confidence in the cause-effect relationship, to quantify the risk more precisely, to determine the degree of reduction in exposure required to significantly improve health, and to establish the effectiveness of interventions.
Benefit-cost analyses of environmental regulations are increasingly mandated in the United States. Evaluations of criteria air pollutants have focused on benefits and costs associated with adverse health effects. Children are significantly affected by the health benefits of improved air quality, yet key environmental health policy analyses have not previously focused specifically on children's effects. In this article we present a "meta-analysis" approach to child-specific health impacts derived from the U.S. Clean Air Act (CAA). On the basis of data from existing studies, reductions in criteria air pollutants predicted to occur by 2010 because of CAA regulations are estimated to produce the following impacts: 200 fewer expected cases of postneonatal mortality; 10,000 fewer asthma hospitalizations in children 1-16 years old, with estimated benefits ranging from 46 million (1990 U.S.1.3 million to 0.7-1.8 billion; and 10,000 fewer infants of low birth weight, with estimated benefits of 1-2 billion (1990 US8 billion in health benefits currently estimated to result from decreased morbidity, and 100 billion estimated to result from decreased mortality. These estimates highlight the need for increased consideration of children's health effects. Key needs for environmental health policy analyses include improved information for children's health effects, additional life-stage-specific information, and improved health economics information specific for children.
The prevalence of cataract is higher in developing countries, and in both developed and developing countries more females than males are blind from cataracts. Three epidemiological studies have associated indoor cooking with solid fuels (e.g. wood or dung) and cataract or blindness. However, associations in these studies may have been caused by unmeasured confounding.
A hospital-based case-control study was conducted on the Nepal-India border. Cases (n = 206) were women patients, aged 35-75 years with confirmed cataracts. Controls (n = 203), frequency matched by age, were patients attending the refractive error clinic at the same hospital. A standardized questionnaire was administered to all participants. Logistic regression analysis involved adjustment for age, literacy, residential area, ventilation, type of lighting, incense use, and working outside.
Compared with using a clean-burning-fuel stove (biogas, LPG, or kerosene), the adjusted odds ratio (OR) for using a flued solid-fuel stove was 1.23 [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.44-3.42], whereas use of an unflued solid-fuel stove had an OR of 1.90 (95% CI 1.00-3.61). Lack of kitchen ventilation was an independent risk factor for cataract (OR 1.96; 95% CI 1.25-3.07).
This study provides confirmatory evidence that use of solid fuel in unflued indoor stoves is associated with increased risk of cataract in women who do the cooking. The association is not likely to be due to bias, including confounding, and strengthens the findings of three previous studies. Replacing unflued stoves with flued stoves would greatly reduce this risk, although cooking with cleaner-burning fuels would be the best option.
Reduction of indoor air pollution (IAP) exposure from solid fuel use is a potentially important intervention for childhood pneumonia prevention. This review updates a prior meta-analysis and investigates whether risk varies by etiological agent and pneumonia severity among children aged less than 5 years who are exposed to unprocessed solid fuels. Searches were made of electronic databases (including Africa, China and Latin America) without language restriction. Search terms covered all sources of IAP and wide-ranging descriptions of acute lower respiratory infections, including viral and bacterial agents. From 5317 studies in the main electronic databases (plus 307 African and Latin American, and 588 Chinese studies, in separate databases), 25 were included in the review and 24 were suitable for meta-analysis. Due to substantial statistical heterogeneity, random effects models were used. The overall pooled odds ratio was 1.78 (95% confidence interval, CI: 1.45-2.18), almost unchanged at 1.79 (95% CI: 1.26-2.21) after exclusion of studies with low exposure prevalence (< 15%) and one high outlier. There was evidence of publication bias, and the implications for the results are explored. Sensitivity subanalyses assessed the impact of control selection, adjustment for confounding, exposure and outcome assessment, and age, but no strong effects were identified. Evidence on respiratory syncytial virus was conflicting, while risk for severe or fatal pneumonia was similar to or higher than that for all pneumonia. Despite heterogeneity, this analysis demonstrated sufficient consistency to conclude that risk of pneumonia in young children is increased by exposure to unprocessed solid fuels by a factor of 1.8. Greater efforts are now required to implement effective interventions.
Reduction of indoor air pollution (IAP) exposure from solid fuel use is a potentially important intervention for childhood pneumonia prevention. This review updates a prior meta-analysis and investigates whether risk varies by etiological agent and pneumonia severity among children aged less than 5 years who are exposed to unprocessed solid fuels. Searches were made of electronic databases (including Africa, China and Latin America) without language restriction. Search terms covered all sources of IAP and wide-ranging descriptions of acute lower respiratory infections, including viral and bacterial agents. From 5317 studies in the main electronic databases (plus 307 African and Latin American, and 588 Chinese studies, in separate databases), 25 were included in the review and 24 were suitable for meta-analysis. Due to substantial statistical heterogeneity, random effects models were used. The overall pooled odds ratio was 1.78 (95% confidence interval, CI: 1.45-2.18), almost unchanged at 1.79 (95% CI: 1.26-2.21) after exclusion of studies with low exposure prevalence (
Inefficient cookstoves contribute to deforestation and global climate change, require substantial time (usually of women and girls) collecting wood or money for fuel and lead to just under two million deaths a year. We examined the effect of solar ovens on fuel use, time spent collecting wood, carbon monoxide exposure, and respiratory illness symptoms. A phased randomised controlled trial was run among women interested in purchasing a solar oven in rural Senegal. Of the envisioned 1000 households, 465 treatments and 325 controls took part in the baseline survey. Households randomly allocated to the control group received their stoves 6 months after treatments. Eighty per cent of our respondents typically cook for more people than the capacity of the solar oven and thus even cooks using the solar oven continue using their traditional stove. In the sixth month of owning the stove, treatments used their solar oven 19 per cent of days measured and did not have statistically significantly lower fuel consumption, time spent collecting fuel or time spent next to the cook fire. However, treatments cooking for 712 persons did lower their wood consumption for cooking by 14 per cent (P<.01). There is no evidence solar ovens reduced exposure to carbon monoxide or self-reported respiratory symptoms such as coughs and sore throats. This evaluation was a policy success because its results halted the proposed nationwide rollout of the solar oven, thus avoiding mass distribution of a stove which cannot reduce indoor air pollution or generate a sizeable decrease in fuel use. The results from this randomised controlled trial show that the HotPot is a poor product choice for the population as a one-pot stove cannot replace the three-stone fire for the lunch meal due to complex cooking patterns with multiple stoves, cooks and burners. A key result from our programme is stove designers both solar and other improved biomass cookstoves should reassess the product design to produce stoves that are affordable, durable, locally appropriate, consistent with current cooking practices (i.e., containing two burners) and large enough to accommodate multi-generational and/or polygamous households with limited incomes and no electricity.
Energy and energy technologies have a central role in social and eco-nomic development at all scales, from household and community to regional and national. Among its welfare effects, energy is closely linked with public health both positively and negatively, the latter through environmental pollution and degradation. We review the current research on how energy use and energy technologies influence public health, emphasizing the risks associated with indoor and ambient air pollution from energy use, and the links between the local and global environmental health impacts of energy use. This review illustrates that, despite their large public health implications, most energy policies and programs in the developing world are funda-mentally treated as components of overall economic development, without explicit assessment of their health benefits or hazards. Closer integration of health in energy management can facilitate the development of policies and programs that increase welfare and minimize negative health outcomes. Renewable energy technologies are used as an example of how an integrated energy-health approach can be used in policy analysis and formulation. *The U.S. Government has the right to retain a nonexclusive, royalty-free license in and to any copyright covering this paper.
Indoor air pollution (IAP) caused by solid fuel use and/or traditional cooking stoves is a global health threat, particularly for women and young children. The WHO World Health Report 2002 estimates that IAP is responsible for 2.7% of the loss of disability adjusted life years (DALYs) worldwide and 3.7% in high mortality developing countries. Despite the magnitude of this problem, social scientists have only recently begun to pay closer attention to this issue and to test strategies for reducing IAP. In this paper, we provide a survey of the current literature on the relationship between indoor air pollution, respiratory health and economic well-being. We then discuss the available evidence on the effectiveness of popular policy prescriptions to reduce IAP within the household.
Acute respiratory infections (ARI) are the leading cause of the global burden of disease and have been causally linked with exposure to pollutants from domestic biomass fuels in less-developed countries. We used longitudinal health data coupled with detailed monitoring of personal exposure from more than 2 years of field measurements in rural Kenya to estimate the exposure-response relation for particulates smaller than 10 mm in diameter (PM(10)) generated from biomass combustion.
55 randomly-selected households (including 93 infants and children, 229 individuals between 5 and 49 years of age, and 23 aged 50 or older) in central Kenya were followed up for more than 2 years. Longitudinal data on ARI and acute lower respiratory infections (ALRI) were recorded at weekly clinical examinations. Exposure to PM(10) was monitored by measurement of PM(10) emission concentration and time-activity budgets.
With the best estimate of the exposure-response relation, we found that ARI and ALRI are increasing concave functions of average daily exposure to PM(10), with the rate of increase declining for exposures above about 1000-2000 mg/m(3). After we had included high-intensity exposure episodes, sex was no longer a significant predictor of ARI and ALRI.
The benefits of reduced exposure to PM(10) are larger for average exposure less than about 1000-2000 mg/m(3). Our findings have important consequences for international public-health policies, energy and combustion research, and technology transfer efforts that affect more than 2 billion people worldwide.
In this paper, we investigate individuals' exposure to indoor air pollution. Using new survey data from Bangladesh, average hours spent by members of households in the cooking area, living area and outdoors in a typical day are combined with the estimates of pollution concentration in different locations in order to estimate exposure. We analyse exposure at two levels: differences within households attributable to family roles, and differences across households attributable to income and education. Within households, we relate individuals' exposure to pollution in different locations during their daily round of activities. We find high levels of exposure for children and adolescents of both sexes, with particularly serious exposure for children under 5 years. Among prime-age adults, we find that men have half the exposure of women (whose exposure is similar to that of children and adolescents). We also find that elderly men have significantly lower exposure than elderly women. Across households, we draw on results from a previous paper, which relate pollution variation across households to choices of cooking fuel, cooking locations, construction materials and ventilation practices. We find that these choices are significantly affected by family income and adult education levels (particularly for women). Overall, we find that the poorest, least-educated households have twice the pollution levels of relatively high-income households with highly educated adults. Our findings further suggest that young children and poorly educated women in poor households face pollution exposures that are four times those for men in higher income households organized by more highly educated women. Since infants and young children suffer the worst mortality and morbidity from indoor air pollution, in this paper we consider measures for reducing their exposure. Our recommendations for reducing the exposure of infants and young children are based on a few simple, robust findings. Hourly pollution levels in cooking and living areas are quite similar because cooking smoke diffuses rapidly and nearly completely into living areas. However, outdoor pollution is far lower. At present, young children are only outside for an average of 3 hours per day. For children in a typical household, pollution exposure can be halved by adopting two simple measures: increasing their outdoor time from 3 to 5 or 6 hours per day, and concentrating outdoor time during peak cooking periods.
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