Nearly 2.9 billion people still use polluting fuels like wood and coal to cook and heat their homes, at a huge cost to the society, in terms of health, environmental and economic costs, estimated at over US$123 billion every year according to this World Bank report. It provides a comprehensive picture of the current state of the global clean cooking sector and underlines urgent need to accelerate adoption of clean and efficient cooking solutions to reach sustainable energy goals by 2030.

Acute lower respiratory infections (ALRI) account for nearly one fifth of mortality in young children worldwide and have been associated with exposures to indoor and outdoor sources of combustion-derived air pollution. A systematic review was conducted to identify relevant articles on air pollution and ALRI in children. Using a Bayesian approach to meta-analysis, a summary estimate of 1.12 (1.03, 1.30) increased risk in ALRI occurrence per 10 μg/m3 increase in annual average PM2.5 concentration was derived from the longer-term (subchronic and chronic) effects studies.

Asia is currently experiencing rapid increases in industrialization, urbanization, and vehicularization. As a result, emission trends (e.g., energy, fuel, vehicle use), population trends (e.g., degree of urbanization, urban population growth, city size), health trends (e.g., age structure, background disease rates), and other important factors (e.g., broad changes in regulatory approaches, improvements in control technology) will influence the extent to which exposure to air pollution affects the health of the Asian population over the next several decades.

In 2000, a risk assessment of IAP (indoor air pollution) due to household use of solid fuels in India was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Smith 2000). Employing a different and more systematic method than used before, it estimated the premature deaths and illnesses resulting from household epidemiological studies of developing countries, which use solid fuels, to the Indian situation by employing the national Census report on percentage of household solid fuel use as the surrogate of exposure.