Impact of smokeless cooking fuel use on health status of women in a rural setting of eastern India

ABSTRACT

The sustainable development goals (SDG 7.1) reinforce to ensure that everyone has access to affordable, safe and renewable energy. In India, women are typically responsible for cooking and are most vulnerable to household air contaminants. We conducted a descriptive cross-sectional comparative study in Odisha, India between exclusive LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) users and non-LPG users. A total of 900 women, 450 from each group, were randomly selected. The LPG-users had a better predictor of physical, psychological, social, and environmental wellbeing than non-LPG users. We found the ophthalmic disorders (adjusted odds ratio (AOR) 2.87, 95% CI 1.16–7.10, p = .023), asthma (AOR 2.05, 95% CI 1.15–3.65, p = .015), and ALRI (acute lower respiratory infections) (AOR 9.19, 95% CI 2.06–40.96, p < .004) were significantly higher in non-LPG users in comparison to LPG users. Access to smokeless cooking fuel will improve women’s quality of life by eliminating the consumption of biofuel and thereby providing a healthier cooking environment.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainable development goals
• smokeless-Cooking-Fuel
• liquefied petroleum gas
• wellbeing
• quality of life
• rural women

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the support of our field research team at Tigiria, under Model Rural Health Research Units (MRHRU), Department of Health Research, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Govt. of India. We thank Subhashree Panda and Dr. Debdutta Sahoo for facilitating data collection. We thank all the participants for their active participation. We also acknowledge Dr. Bijaya K Padhi, PGIMER, Chandigarh, Dr. Sanjay K Juvekar, from KEMHRC, Pune and Dr. B Sahoo, RMRC for their support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Debdutta Bhattacharya

Correspondence Sanghamitra Pati [email protected] ICMR-Regional Medical Research Centre, (Department of Health Research, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Govt. of India), Chandrasekharpur, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India; Debdutta Bhattacharya [email protected]; [email protected] Department of Microbiology, ICMR-Regional Medical Research Centre, (Department of Health Research, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Govt. of India), Chandrasekharpur, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India