India could make a major dent in air pollution by curbing emissions from dirty household fuels such as wood, dung, coal and kerosene, shows a new analysis led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the India Institute of Technology.
India could make a major dent in air pollution by curbing emissions from dirty household fuels such as wood, dung, coal and kerosene, shows a new analysis led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the India Institute of Technology.
Eliminating emissions from these sources — without any changes to industrial or vehicle emissions — would bring the average outdoor air pollution levels below the country’s air quality standard, the study shows. Mitigating the use of household fuels could also reduce air pollution-related deaths in the country by approximately 13%, which is equivalent to saving about 270,000 lives a year.
“Household fuels are the single biggest source of outdoor air pollution in India,” said Kirk R. Smith, professor of global environmental health at UC Berkeley and director of the Collaborative Clean Air Policy Centre. “We looked at what would happen if they only cleaned up households, and we came to this counterintuitive result that the whole country would reach national air pollution standards if they did that.”
Read more at University of California – Berkeley
Photo: Smoke rises above houses in the Ladakh region of India. (Photo courtesy Ajay Pillarisetti)
