Trends of indoor air pollution and respiratory tract infections on global scale: A review

According to World Health Organization, more than half of the world's population relies on dung, wood, crop waste or coal to meet their most basic energy needs. Use of these kinds of fuels for cooking leads to Indoor Air Pollution. Use of open fire with simple solid fuels, biomass, or coal for cooking and heating, exposes billions of people especially women worldwide to the concentration of particulate matter and gasses. Unventilated dwelling increases the exposure of an individual to it. These concentrations are 10 to 20 times higher than health guidelines for typical urban outdoor concentrations defined by WHO. Indoor air pollution is a multi-dimensional problem which increases the burden on health of families in developing countries. In the context of tribal communities, type of cooking stoves, kitchen configurations and housing patterns are rudimentary, which may lead to the high concentration of indoor air pollution. This paper focuses on one of the least studied area in rural India and perhaps never studied in tribes. This combination of subjects of Indoor Air Pollution and respiratory health of women and children in the field of Anthropology is still an unexplored terrain.