MUMBAI: In much of rural India, families continue to light their kitchen fires with wood, dung and coal - a practice that exposes them to harmful smoke. Switching these families to exclusive use of LPG, a relatively clean energy , would save more than 1,50,000 lives a year due to reductions in both indoor and outdoor pollution, according to a new study by Vital Strategies , a global public health organisation. Such a transition would also add around 37 lakh "healthy years" to the population, the study found.
More than half these benefits would be in four states - Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, and Madhya Pradesh. These states have a combination of the highest populations, lowest LPG use, and highest ambient air pollution, said Sumi Mehta, the epidemiologist who led the study at Vital Strategies. "They have everything going on at the same time.
" Most of the health gains come from reductions in infant mortality due to low birth weight among children under five as well as improvements in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease among people over 60, the study said. The findings support a health-based targeting of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), govt scheme providing subsidised gas to families below the poverty line. For this study, researchers looked at how partial and full LPG subsidies would impact the health of some 90 million poor households that currently have either no access to cooking gas or partial access under PMUY.
If such families were to switch to LPG exc.