ABSTRACT
‘Wood is the fuel that warms you twice’, goes an old New England expression: ‘once when chopping and once when burning’. Unfortunately, however, wood seems to have the potential to generate heat a third time, because the smoke from its burning is a major risk factor for respiratory infections and the fever that often accompanies them. It is now believed that the burning of simple household biomass fuels – wood, but also fuels derived from trees, crops, animal dung, shrubs, grasses and root plants – is responsible for some 1.4 million (range: 1 million to 2 million) premature deaths annually, mainly in women and young children of developing countries (Smith et al, 2004). Household use of coal, another solid fuel that produces significant pollution, is responsible for another 200,000 premature deaths a year, mostly in China. This places indoor air pollution from household fuels as the second most important environmental risk factor globally, after poor water and sanitation, being responsible for a health burden well above that from all outdoor air pollution in cities, and tenth among risk factors of all kinds (Ezzati et al, 2002; WHO, 2002; Figure 5.1, overleaf). Global burden of disease from major controllable risk factors https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781849771627/7ab5d0eb-a4ce-4d61-ab98-7d0f45d6a280/content/fig5_1_C.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
