Children of mothers exposed to indoor pollution have less birth weight

Children born to mothers who spend long hours in traditional wood fire kitchens have low body weight and are more prone to catching pneumonia. These are the findings of a yet-to-be-released international study that has pushed the government to come out with new clean cooking options for the poor under its Swachh Bharat campaign.

Updated on: Oct 13, 2015, 17:22:55 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Children born to mothers who are exposed to high concentration of smoke from cooking may have low body weight and could be more prone to catching pneumonia.

A file photo of a woman cooking in traditional wood fire kitchen in Gujarat. (Shutterstock)

These are the preliminary findings of a yet-to-be-released international study. Similar studies have been a reason for the government’s push to come out with new clean cooking options for the poor under its Swachh Bharat campaign. Preliminary findings of the study by John Hopkins University, likely to be published by the medical journal Lancet in early 2016, may show impact on birth weight of a child born to a mother exposed to high indoor air pollution. The weight loss is significant considering a majority of children in poor households are already born malnourished.

Such children are also more prone to catching diseases like pneumonia after birth because of a weak immune system. Indoor air pollution kills about a million people in India every year, a 2012 Lancet study said. Indian government sources said the prime minister’s office has asked the ministry of new and renewable energy to explore scaling up manufacture of clean stoves in order to make these available to 100 million homes by 2020. “We may soon commission a study for scaling up,” a MNRE official said.

The market for these stoves hasn’t quite picked up due to lack of awareness and availability. “Cost is another deterrent as most families that use firewood are very poor,” said a representative of one company that manufactures these stoves. But the government believes scaling up production will result in easy availability and cost reductions, and have an added benefit — it will create employment for rural youth.

“We will soon have research evidence to show that switching to cleaner cooking options results in saving precious little lives and also empowers women,” Radha Muthiah, head of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, told HT. Long-term studies in South Asia and Africa have already shown “significant” improvements in child health in cases of switching to cleancooking options.

A study by civil society group Practical Action shows that on average, a rural Indian woman spends 374 hours a year collecting firewood. Added with the time taken to collect water, she loses up to three hours a day just collecting water and firewood to feed her family.

Muthiah said opting for clean cooking saves women time, which can be put to better use. “Households with clean stoves reported sending their children to schools more often.” The switch to clean stoves has larger environmental benefits too since cooking makes up for 25% of black carbon emission and 17% of deforestation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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