Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
- Occupational—leading to illnesses such as silicosis and mercury poisoning, particularly
victimizing miners and industrial workers.
- Modern—affecting people living in modern, airtight buildings due to radon and asbes-
tos from building materials and formaldehyde emitted from insulating foam (the so-
called sick building syndrome).
We shall restrict our discussion to the “traditional” type of pollution, which is
closely linked to the fuel wood crisis.
In 1989, the total production of wood, that is, wood felled and harvested from
trees regardless of its use, was about 3,500 million cubic meters, evenly distributed
between industrial wood and fuel wood.
In industrialized countries, 82% of the wood is not burned but is used for indus-
trial purposes; in the less-developed countries 80% is used for fuel wood. Wood
and other biomass fuels comprise 40-60% of the total energy resource for many
developing Asian, Latin American, and African countries. Domestic cooking ac-
counts for over 60% of the total national energy use in sub-Saharan Africa and ex-
ceeds 80% in several countries. In addition, some poor families spend 20% or more
than 25% of their total household time collecting wood.
Biomass burned for cooking by the poor has been identified by the World Health
Organization (WHO) as the major indoor air pollution health problem in the world
today; WHO estimates that almost 1.5 billion people live in unhealthy air. High
levels of wood smoke exposure—often 10 or more times the recommended WHO
limits—have been reported in emission studies throughout developing countries.
This, in turn, has been linked to acute respiratory infection (ARI), in particular
pneumonia, along with a number of other aliments.
Women—who generally perform over 90% of domestic chores, including cook-
ing—and their children make up the segment of the population most continuously
exposed to indoor air pollution. As an example, one could mention that in a group
of developing countries (India, Nepal, Nigeria, Kenya, Guatemala, and Papua New
Guinea) typical exposure to suspended particulate matter (SPM) is 10-200 times
higher than the WHO exposure guideline, while exposure to carbon monoxide is
five times the limit and exposure to benzo[
a
]pyrene, a known cause of cancer, is at
least 100 times that of the WHO guideline. The resulting pollution levels in homes
and cooking huts in these countries is equivalent to the particulate dosage from
smoking several packs of cigarettes a day. ARI is, in fact, the leading health hazard
to children in developing countries and is responsible for an estimated 4.3 milli-
