Cooking practices, air quality, and the acceptability of advanced cookstoves in Haryana, India: an exploratory study to inform large-scale interventions. Global Health Action, 5 2012, doi:10.3402/gha.v5i0.19016.
Mukhopadhyay R, Sambandam S, Pillarisetti A, Jack D, Mukhopadhyay K, Balakrishnan K, Vaswani M, Bates MN, Kinney PL, Arora N, & Smith, KR.
Background: In India, approximately 66% of households rely on dung or woody biomass as fuels for cooking. These fuels are burned under inefficient conditions, leading to household air pollution (HAP) and exposure to smoke containing toxic substances. Large-scale intervention efforts need to be informed by careful piloting to address multiple methodological and sociocultural issues. This exploratory study provides preliminary data for such an exercise from Palwal District, Haryana, India.
Methods: Traditional cooking practices were assessed through semi-structured interviews in participating households. Philips and Oorja, two brands of commercially available advanced cookstoves with small blowers to improve combustion, were deployed in these households. Concentrations of particulate matter (PM) with a diameter< 2.5 µm (PM2.5) and carbon monoxide (CO) related to traditional stove use were measured using real-time and integrated personal, microenvironmental samplers for optimizing protocols to evaluate exposure reduction. Qualitative data on acceptability of advanced stoves and objective measures of stove usage were also collected.
Conclusions: The high PM and CO concentrations reinforce the need for interventions that reduce HAP exposure in the aforementioned community. Of the two stoves tested, participants expressed satisfaction with the Philips brand as it met the local criteria for usability. Further understanding of how the introduction of an advanced stove influences patterns of household energy use is needed. The preliminary data provided here would be useful for designing feasibility and/or pilot studies aimed at intervention efforts locally and
nationally.
