New problems of indoor air pollution are arising from synthetic materials and structural techniques, and from construction materials whose constituents are potentially toxic or irritant and hence likely to produce allergic responses. The causes of such indoor pollution are not precise. The term may also be extended to cover tobacco smoke and body odour. It may include the combined effects of office machines and carpeting. Recent reports suggest that there is both direct and circumstantial evidence that exposure of the public to indoor air pollutants are large enough and widespread enough to account for a substantial amount of sickness and premature death.
[Developing countries] Indoor air pollution remains a very real public health hazard for hundreds of millions of people living in developing countries. It is the women, children and the elderly who are at greater risk of damaging their health through a whole array of diseases varying from asthma to cancer triggered off by indoor air pollution. Smoke from indoor cooking fires that burn fuelwood and dung is estimated to cause the death of 4 million children each year worldwide. Indoor air pollution is the commonest cause of occupationally related respiratory disease among women in developing countries; in 1985 at least 400 million women and girls were afflicted with life-shortening chronic respiratory disease due to inhaling toxic smoke and fumes from combusted biomass fuel. This is a common problem in northern India and Pakistan, in the highlands of east and central Africa, and in Papua New Guinea.
People in developing countries face larger amounts of indoor pollutants, such as sulphur and nitric oxides and arsenic compounds, due to greater exposure to open fires which burn biomass, coal or wood as fuel. Indoor pollution, a more severe threat to women and children who spend more time indoors, causes respiratory disorders and is also linked to heart and lung disease mortality. A study in India and Nepal demonstrates that cardiovascular disease is more common among women who have been exposed to indoor pollutants (WHO 1992).
Indoor air pollution caused by the widespread use of biomass as a cooking fuel is also a major contributor to the high incidence of respiratory diseases because of the exposure to smoke and other pollutants in a confined space. In sub-Saharan Africa, biomass use is expected to provide nearly 80 per cent of the total energy used even in 2010.