Rural China Choking on Indoor Air Pollution

By J.R. Pegg

WASHINGTON, DC, April 23, 2003 (ENS) - The problem of urban air pollution in China has been widely documented and there is little doubt that many of the nation's major cities have severe air quality issues. But many people in rural China face a serious and less reported indoor air pollution problem and addressing the issue is far from easy.

The World Bank has designated indoor air pollution one of the four most critical global environmental problems and officials point to a study that estimates as many as 2.8 million deaths per year in developing countries result from breathing elevated levels of indoor smoke from dirty fuels.

The primary source of indoor air pollution within China and the developing world is cook stoves, used for cooking and heating, and fueled by crop residue, woody biomass or coal.

Efforts to address the problem often run into political and cultural barriers, explained Robert Weller, an anthropology professor and research associate at Boston University's Institute for the Study of Economic Culture.

Burning biomass indoors can pose severe health risks to people but many rural Chinese appear either unaware of or resigned to these risks, Weller told attendees at today's meeting of the China Environment Forum, which is part of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Project.

Indoor air pollution poses increased risks to children, who are more susceptible to its health effects. (Photo by Peyton Johnson courtesy UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO))

And these measurements, Weller said, were taken in August, when levels are probably at their lowest.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), indoor air pollution due to biomass smoke is one of the largest environmental risk factors for ill-health of any kind.

Some two to three billion people throughout the world use wood or other biomass fuels for cooking and heating, a process that the WHO says is inefficient and produces many pollutants. They warn that a pollutant released indoors is 1,000 times more likely to reach people's lungs than a pollutant released outdoors.

Even within the context of a program considered a success in putting cleaner cook stoves in the homes of rural Chinese, cultural and political hurdles still pervade, explained Jonathan Sinton, a scientist with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's China Energy Group.

Sinton and others are analyzing the effectiveness of China's National Improved Stoves Program, which began in the early 1980s and ended in 1995, is considered "the most successful Chinese energy efficiency programs."

The preliminary analysis of the program, Sinton told attendees at today's meeting, finds that this claim by the Chinese government is accurate, but it is important to remember the program was created to reduce rural fuel shortages, not for public health or environmental reasons,

Some 180 million to 200 million households did receive improved stoves under the program as the private sector responded to the government's call for people to buy and install new or modified stoves.

Biogas stoves, which run on less polluting organic wastes, are beginning to make small inroads into rural China. (Photo courtesy Canada's Office of Urban Agriculture)

Most families in rural China rely on one, and often more than one, stove for cooking and for heating their homes, Sinton explained, and these stoves often use whatever local fuel is most convenient and affordable, typically biomass and coal.

Electricity is available in much of rural China but too expensive for most to use for heating or cooking.

Rural cook stoves are seldom properly ventilated, partly because of ignorance about the health effects, but in large part because people are desperate to keep as much of the heat in their homes as possible.

The survey conducted by Sinton and others found that even two thirds of the improved coal cook stoves did not have flues, for example. Poor ventilation of biomass cook stoves is an even larger problem, as crop wastes and woody biomass account for 80 percent of energy use in rural China, Sinton said.

China's program to get improved stoves into rural homes was effective in spurring private sector activity, Sinton explained, even if many of the stoves actually do little to improve the current situation.

"Solid fuels likely to remain mainstay for a long time," Sinton said, and this is not just true for China. The WHO finds that although global biomass usage has dropped in recent years, it appears to be increasing for the world's poorest individuals.

"The only real long term solution is poverty alleviation," Sinton said.

Indoor air pollution from cook stoves is a problem in many other developing countries, including India. (Photo by A. Wolsted courtesy FAO)

"Women are in more danger from indoor air pollution but they have the least access to mechanisms of empowerment," Weller explained.

Greater empowerment of individuals is the key to better overall environmental protection in rural China, he added.

Weller's study looked not just at the problems with China indoor air pollution, but at growing concerns about outdoor air pollution from the industrialization that is seeping into rural China.

Many of the people surveyed by Weller did not appear to care much about their impact on the environment and some 60 percent had not heard of the term "environmental protection," he said.

Expansion of China's Environmental Protection Bureaus (EPBs) throughout the country could be sowing the seeds for change, he said. The Chinese government wants an EPB in each county, Weller explained, and this is "a huge expansion of the environmental protection bureaucracy."

Although officials with EPBs currently tend to be more interested in showing their superiors economic growth than environmental protection, Weller says this needed growth in the environmental protection bureaucracy is a necessary first step in empowering individuals to challenge air polluters.

"There is potential in this expansion and in the legal system, but we are a long way off," Weller said.

Improved education for rural Chinese is much needed, Weller said, although he added that this is "not a short term strategy."

Government campaigns can be another important tool in raising the environmental consciousness of rural China, he said, but "solutions need to be better targeted to local needs."

For more information about the China Environment Forum, click here.