Leaderspeak | Indoor Air Pollution
A health hazard hiding in plain sight The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many of us to stay at home for long. There are many side effects of staying at home for long on our mental, physical, and emotional well being. Indoor air pollution could be an additional health hazard which has not been extensively researched as ambient air quality. Citizens need to be extra careful to keep air quality at their homes clean and their health fine
T
he deteriorating air quality in our cities has forced governments to deploy technological tools to monitor air quality in different parts of the cities round the clock but there are still only few research studies on quality of air inside our homes. The pandemic and following lockdowns have forced many of us to remain indoors. Air quality dips in many cities of the country with coming of the winter season and that is because of several reasons combined. Stubble burning, bursting of crackers during the festival season and low ambient temperature increased the pollutants in the ambience.
30 November 2020 | www.urbanupdate.in
Government’s initiative
India has taken long strides in the use of clean fuel in poor rural and urban homes with the introduction of Ujjwala Yojana. The free LPG connection scheme has seen a huge increase in the number of poor households with gas stove thus reducing dependency on the use of solid fuels such as coal, dung cakes, and firewood for cooking. Many studies suggest that sustained exposure to indoor air pollution increases the risk of stroke, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, and acute respiratory infections in women and children. Government of India, in 2016, launched the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY)—the largest clean
cooking energy programme of its kind— to protect the health of women and children. By subsidising connections and providing a loan for the cost of LPG adoption, the scheme has been pivotal in transforming access to LPG with over 80 million connections provided to poor households in 715 districts. There is no doubt that the scheme has helped in reducing pollution in millions of Indian homes but affordability to refill the gas cylinders remain a concern for many poor families, especially in the times of the pandemic in which many livelihoods have been affected. It is a major challenge to stop people from switching back to biomass fuel. It is expected that the successful implementation of the PMUY (to provide LPG to poor households) and
