Recently I met a pregnant woman who was into cashew processing
in one of my ethnographic works. As I spoke with her it turned out to be
a very sad conversation. She had lost two of her children within
twenty-eight days of their births and had had one still birth. In her
current pregnancy, she looks ill and coughs recurrently. When I inquired
about what was wrong, she could not give any answer because she had not
been able to seek any medical attention. I asked when she started her
cashew business, and she said “about ten years ago”, meaning the two
children that died and the still birth all happened while she was in the
business. Due to lack of death registration in this part of the world,
the cause of the death of her children was not known. However, judging
from the way she was coughing, I could tell that the woman has been
inhaling a lot of smoke in the course of processing the cashew nuts.
This smoke has been affecting her and her children causing her series of
ill health and her children to die shortly after birth. The pathetic
aspect of the conversation was that when I put it to her that smoke from
her business could be responsible for her condition and the death of
her children, she affirmed it, confirming that she usually coughs out
black soot, especially while she is pregnant. My observations while
talking with her confirmed her narration.
This is exactly what more than 2 billion rural dwellers who
rely on firewood for heating and cooking go through in developing
countries. Wood fuel releases a number of hazardous pollutants,
including carbon monoxide, sulphur, nitrogen oxides, and particulate
matter. This predominantly inefficient cooking method is the leading
cause of Indoor Air Pollution (IAP), which constitutes a lot of health
issues and consequently deaths particularly for children and their
mothers.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), four
million women and children die prematurely in developing countries every
year from cooking carbon emissions, a figure two times the total number
of global deaths from Covid-19 in 2020. Nigeria experiences the highest
number of in-door air pollution deaths in Africa, constituting about
79,000 deaths annually. In Nigeria, majority of the population lives in
rural areas where the only method of cooking is the traditional three
stone fire which requires huge amounts of firewood and produces large
amount of smoke. In many households, poor ventilation arising from
nonexistence of chimneys, exacerbates the effects of these pollutants,
and women and children are often exposed to them at a significant level
each day.
Exposure to fuel wood smoke has been implicated as a causal
agent for respiratory and eye diseases, including cataract and
blindness. As a result, a large number of women who do the cooking, as
well as young children and infants in the vicinity of the cooking areas
are mostly vulnerable. Deaths from acute lower respiratory infection in
children younger than five years account for about 90% of the total
number of deaths from indoor air pollution in Nigeria, exposing them to
asthma, chronic lung conditions, heart attacks, strokes, headaches,
fatigue, dizziness and nausea. Studies have attributed stillbirths,
infant low birth weight, and adverse pregnancy outcomes in women to poor
in-door air quality. Moreover, constant search for fuel wood represents
a large burden for women, particularly in rural areas and makes them
vulnerable to sexual harassment, abuse and rape amidst heavy
insecurities and insurgencies. Understanding how women and children
particularly girls are impacted by in-door air pollution in developing
countries, should be a global concern.