Indoor pollution: invisible killer

Lazarus Sauti

After returning from a village meeting, Maneta plucks Musasa leaves from their stems and picks up stray logs to make fire and prepare for dinner.

She and her two children, Taurai and Chiedza, gather on a dirt floor in a shed-like structure next to their house in Goromonzi District, in Mashonaland East province.

Wisps of smoke rise from their choto, the Shona name given to a traditional cooking-stove, sculpted out of clay, and fuelled by wood and other organic matter.

Maneta, sadly, does not worry much about the dark and heavy smoke.

“The pollution does not bother me at all. It just goes up and away,” she said, piling roughly chopped logs into the stove.

This simple daily act is replicated in the homes of more than 70 percent of Zimbabweans, who depend on solid fuels such as wood, charcoal, crops or other agricultural waste, animal dung, shrubs and straw, saw dust, gel and coal for their cooking and heating needs.

According to the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MISC) 2014, 73.9 percent of households in the country still rely on such fuels as their primary cooking and heating energy sources.

“Overall, 73.9 percent of the household population in Zimbabwe used solid fuels for cooking, mainly wood (73.4 percent). Use of such fuels is low in urban areas (17.0 percent), but high in rural areas where 95.8 percent of the population lived in households that use solid fuels,” notes the MISC.

The use of solid fuels is dangerous to the well-being of citizens as it amplifies the risks of incurring acute respiratory illness.

The World Health Organisation confirms: “A million children die every year in developing countries from acute respiratory infections and a major cause of these infections is air pollution from the wood, animal dung and other biofuels that are burnt everyday in their own homes.”

Further, a recent report released at the World Economic Forum on Africa (WEF on Africa) by the Africa Progress Panel (APP) says more Africans are dying every day due to indoor air pollution.

The report, titled “Power, People, Planet: Seizing Africa’s Energy and Climate Opportunities”, shows that an estimated 600 000 Africans die each year as a result of household air pollution, half of them children under the age of five, with acute respiratory tract infection the primary cause of fatality.

Environmental expert, Simon Bere of the Institute of Waste Management – Zimbabwe Chapter, adds that the use of fire-fueled energy also increases the risks of incurring pneumonia, chronic obstructive lung disease, cancer and possibly tuberculosis, asthma, or cataracts.

“Cooking and heating with solid fuels leads to high levels of indoor smoke which contains a complex mix of health-damaging pollutants,” he said.

Bere added that the main problem with the use of solid fuels is their incomplete combustion which produces toxic elements such as carbon monoxide, polyaromatic hydrocarbons as well as sulphur dioxide.

He also said that the country’s climate is at risk from the smoke, which contains dark particles that absorb sunlight, alter atmospheric patterns and hasten glacial melting.

However, Bere believes health and environmental problems can be avoided by using clean fuels such as biogas and solar.

“The adoption of clean energy sources such as natural gas, hydro, solar, wind and biogas is the easiest and most ubiquitous avenue of reducing health and environmental problems caused by indoor air pollution,” he said.

Bere added that the government and other stakeholders should seek ways to move past the damaging energy sources such as solid fuels that have brought the country to the brink of catastrophe.

He also said that the use of clean energy can also reduce demand for electricity.

International Development Economist, Bjorn Larsen, believes much cleaner solution to indoor pollution is to get everyone to use gas.

“Using gas would save 2.3 million deaths each year and avoid 13 billion days of illness, leading to more than twice the benefits,” he said.

Star Tarumbiswa, a certified social worker, says for children, indoor pollution can be halved by doing two simple things: increasing their outdoor time from three to five or six hours per day, and concentrating outdoor time during peak cooking periods.

She added that national ‘clean household’ promotion programmes, aimed at people like Maneta and others, can reduce indoor air pollution, but to be effective, they should be combined with effective public education on the associated health and environmental benefits.

Bere says there is need for a clear cut policy that deals with indoor pollution.

“The country does not have a clear cut policy that deals directly with indoor pollution issues.

“Even the Environmental Management Agency (Ema) is much concerned about open air pollution from industries, power plants, smelters as well as vehicles,” he said.

Bere also noted that there needs to be more coordination in the sector.

“There is limited coordination, both at strategic and technical level, between all ministries which are custodians of health and environment issues and Ema.

“Further, there is limited involvement of the Standard Association of Zimbabwe (Saz) in health and environmental issues. Saz should set standards for indoor pollutants as they are harmful to people and the environment,” he added.

The ministry of Health and Child Care, Ministry of Environment, Ema and development partners, he says, must work together and give prominence to health and environmental issues if the country is to integrate the physical, social and health sciences and save people like Maneta and others from indoor pollution.