Household Air Pollution and Clean Cooking Fuels: Despite Efforts, Many Still Lack Access: LP Gas, aka Propane, Offers the Most Practical Solution: Efforts by the UN, WHO, and Others

     Programs to promote and subsidize clean cooking fuels have been around for a long time. The fuels they replace cause respiratory diseases, particularly among women and children who breathe the toxic smoke. While environmentalist elites in the U.S. try to depict natural gas and LP gas, or propane, as toxic because they do emit some nitrogen oxides (NOx), those other fuels, including wood, charcoal, kerosene, crop residues, dung, and even coal, emit far worse pollutants. Compared to them, natural gas and LP gas are clean. Hence, the relative term “clean cooking fuels.” LPG does not produce the fine particulate matter and soot as the solid fuels do, and that makes it much healthier for those in the home, especially when the stoves are unvented, which is often the case.

       Jennifer Hernandez and Vijaya Ramachandran wrote an article about clean cooking fuels in The Ecomodernist that highlights the work of Kirk Smith in solving this problem over several decades. They write:

“Beginning in the early 1980s, Smith studied the consequences of cooking with solid fuels in poorly ventilated homes. He and his colleagues documented the links between household smoke and serious illness, including childhood pneumonia, chronic lung disease, and cardiovascular disease. His work on clean cooking in India helped transform household air pollution from a largely overlooked problem into a major public-health and development priority. Smith worked with Indian researchers to measure women’s exposure to smoke from traditional cooking fuels such as wood, dung, charcoal, and crop residues. That fieldwork helped establish the scientific basis for understanding household air pollution as a serious cause of respiratory and cardiovascular disease, especially among women and young children.”

     Smith argued that slightly cleaner biomass stoves were an inadequate solution and advocated for the use of LPG.

“By documenting the risks of solid-fuel cooking and making the case for clean fuels at scale, Smith helped shift clean cooking from a niche stove-design issue to a central question of health, gender equity, air quality, and development. Smith and his collaborators showed that household air pollution was among the world’s largest environmental health risks, contributing to millions of premature deaths each year.”

     The World Health Organization notes that about one quarter of the world’s population, or 2.1 billion people, are exposed to high levels of household air pollution. This is expected to fall to 1.8 billion people by 2030, which is great, but not nearly enough. These toxic cooking methods are estimated to cause 2.9 million premature deaths per year, including 309,000 children dying per year. Sub-Saharan Africa leads the world in lack of access to clean cooking fuels, with an estimated 923 million people lacking access. This is where the majority of people lack access to electricity.

     The specific diseases caused by toxic cooking fuels and their occurrence are listed by the WHO below:

     The WHO points out that rural people are especially affected by the lack of clean cooking fuels.

“There is a large discrepancy in access to cleaner cooking alternatives between urban and rural areas: in 2021, only 14% of people in urban areas relied on polluting fuels and technologies, compared with 49% of the global rural population.”

     Of course, there are fuels cleaner than LPG. These include electricity, solar, biogas, and ethanol, but biogas cleanliness is variable depending on how processed it is. These options are often not available and not affordable.  

     They list another benefit of switching from wood and charcoal to LPG. It saves the local forests from being stripped away as they have in several places in the world, including central Africa and Haiti.

“The contrast between Haiti and the Dominican Republic illustrates the point. The two countries share the island of Hispaniola and have similar environmental conditions, but they have followed very different cooking-fuel paths. The Dominican Republic shifted much more of its household cooking away from wood and charcoal and toward LPG or electricity, while Haiti has remained heavily dependent on charcoal.”

     Forests in Haiti have been cut down, while those in the Dominican Republic have been preserved. This is a major reason that flooding causes such devastation in Haiti but not in the Dominican Republic. Forests stripped for cooking fuels in Africa have led to destructive landslides that have killed many.

     Another issue is that women and children spend considerable time sourcing and gathering these toxic cooking fuels, time that could be spent on education. It also puts them at risk for injury and violence.

     WHO also points out that indoor air pollution is a major contributor to outdoor air pollution.

     They note that Smith was concerned that restrictions on fossil fuel use due to climate change concerns would lead to restrictions on LPG use, which would ensure guaranteed health problems for billions of women and children. They write:

“A targeted LPG subsidy for poor households must be evaluated as a public-health intervention, not as a generic fossil-fuel subsidy.”

     They stress that LPG must be made affordable, with subsidization as necessary. It should also be widely available. They argue that policy should support LPG as the major solution until affordable electricity is available. They also argue that Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) should not be pitted against climate concerns.

“The same principle applies more broadly. Energy policy should not be reduced to a choice between climate and development goals. Healthier and more prosperous societies are generally better able to invest in environmental protection, forest restoration, and cleaner energy systems. Climate policy should support energy transitions within poor households, to improve health outcomes and alleviate the burden of poverty.”

     WHO recently reported that the UN’s SDG on ambient and household air pollution has not been improving over the past 5 years but has remained more or less stable since COVID. There are three SDGs regarding ambient and household air pollution, listed below.

     There are also efforts from the private sector that focus on problems like clean cooking fuels. One, I wrote about earlier this year, Energy Corps, was founded by energy CEO Toby Rice, his wife, and prominent geologist and energy expert Scott Tinker. 

References:

 

A Practical Climate Test: Clean Cooking for the World’s Poor: A recognition of Kirk Smith and his refusal to prioritize climate change over the needs of the world’s poor. Jennifer Hernandez and Vijaya Ramachandran. The Ecomodernist. July 17, 2026. A Practical Climate Test: Clean Cooking for the World’s Poor

Household air pollution. World Health Organization. December 26, 2025. Household air pollution

New SDG data shows stalled progress on air pollution and health. World Health Organization. June 29, 2026. New SDG data shows stalled progress on air pollution and health