Indoor air quality (IAQ) research deals with the presence, levels, health effects, and control of physical, chemical, and biological factors in indoor environments, including homes, workplaces, and vehicles. IAQ research in industrialized countries has examined hundreds of specific factors (e.g., temperature, various chemicals, and mold), sources of pollution environment (e.g., environmental tobacco smoke, occupational factors, consumer cleaning products, and moisture), and control technologies (e.g., ventilation).
In developing countries, however, the great majority of IAQ research, which is considerably less extensive compared to research in industrialized nations, has focused on the role of household power consumption and energy use and indoor smoke from cooking and heating because this source of indoor air pollution has the largest public health effects.
Globally, almost 3 billion people rely on biomass (wood, charcoal, crop residues, and dung) and coal as their primary source of domestic energy. Biomass resources accounts for more than one-half of household energy in many developing countries and for as much as 95% in some lower income regions (Fig. bellow). There is also evidence that in some countries the declining trend of household dependence on biomass has slowed, or even reversed, especially among poorer households. Slow economic growth, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, lack of energy infrastructure in remote rural areas for delivery of alternative energy sources, and uncertainty about the price of alternative fuels are among the likely causes of the persistence of biomass fuels.
