Indoor air pollution is potentially a very serious environmental and public health problem in India. In poor communities, with the continuing trend in biofuel combustion coupled with deteriorating housing conditions, the problem will remain for some time to come.

Due to combustion of solid fuels, indoor air pollution seems to be a major contributor to disease in India, but few quantitative exposure assessment studies are available. This study quantified daily average concentrations of respirable particulates in 420 rural homes of Andhra Pradesh and recorded time activity data of 1400 individuals to reconstruct 24-hour average exposures.

This paper estimates the economic burden of respiratory illness in rural UP (Uttar Pradesh), a state in North India. This is based on a large comprehensive survey covering a sample of 7564 households in 6 districts and 51 villages in UP. The economic value of the days lost due to illness in one month is 4233 million rupees. Cleaner fuels, health education and better health care can avoid some of these expenditures.

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.

An evaluation of the Government of India's NPIC (National Programme of Improved Cookstoves) was undertaken in six states to learn lessons and assess impediments to future stoves programmes. The programmes were assessed on the basis of stove design, consumer satisfaction, capacity for quality control, and the role of subsidies in reaching a greater number of people.

Switching entirely to LPG to meet household energy needs is one way of reducing indoor air pollution. It also has the additional benefits of facilitating convenience in cooking and saving cooking time. Although there are a number of reasons why many households do not use LPG, the primary reason is that the poor cannot afford it. The Andhra Pradesh government has launched an innovative, targeted subsidy programme - the Deepam scheme - to encourage the LPG consumption among low-income households.

Firewood, agricultural residue and animal dung are commonly called biomass fuels. In Bangladesh, biomass is obtained from three sources - trees, field crops and livestock. Biomass is important for the household purpose, mainly cooking. To save fuel consumption and time, and keep the kitchen clean and free of smoke, an improved cookstove programme has been started by the Government of Bangladesh.