Buying briquettes? Here's what you need to know
Briquettes. Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 30 per cent of the global disease burden from household air pollution.
What you need to know:
- In Africa, as of 2019, WHO estimates that 800 million people were exposed to household air pollution.
- Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 30 per cent of the global disease burden from household air pollution.
Emily Moraa has used briquettes since 2022.
Emily, a resident of Mathare 4B in Nairobi County, made the shift from conventional charcoal after a colleague from their savings group introduced her to the new cooking fuel.
“I’d have terrible headaches whenever I cooked with the charcoal stove indoors,” she says.
“That’s why I quickly accepted the idea of using the briquettes because I was told my problem would stop as the headache was caused by the toxic gas it produced.”
Now, the greengrocer says the headache has stopped and she spends less on the fuel.
“I buy 13 pieces of briquettes for Sh50 and use them for three days,” she says.
“Before, I’d use one tin of charcoal a day. A tin is 2kg, and retails at Sh80.”
While Emily has found a cheaper alternative in briquettes, scientists have bad news for her.
“Charcoal briquettes still produce high volumes of carbon monoxide. When used in modern or improved stoves, they minimise emission of carbon monoxide but don’t meet the WHO (World Health Organisation) guidelines on safe cooking fuels,” says Dr James Mwitari, a senior research fellow and principal investigator at Clean Air Africa project based at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri).
Under WHO indoor air quality guidelines, fuels and technologies are considered clean if annual average concentrations of the fine particulate matter (PM2.5) do not exceed five microgrammes per cubic metre air (5 µg/m3).
Or their 24-hour average concentrations of PM2.5 does not exceed four milligrammes per cubic metre (4 mg/m3).
Therefore, the air that fails to meet these guidelines poses a health risk to individuals exposed to it.
According to WHO, households that rely on open fires, solid fuel and kerosene stoves or lamps for cooking, heating or lighting are exposed to high levels of household air pollution and consequently at a greater risk for disease.
In Africa, as of 2019, WHO estimates that 800 million people were exposed to household air pollution.
Consequently, Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 30 per cent of the global disease burden from household air pollution.
In Kenya, the Ministry of Health writes in its National Strategic Plan for the Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases (2021–26) that non-communicable diseases make up 39 per cent of annual deaths, with cardiovascular diseases causing most deaths at a 13.8 mortality rate.
And the leading cardiovascular diseases are stroke, which kills more women (6.4 per cent) than men (5.8 per cent) and ischemic heart diseases causing 4.7 per cent deaths among men and 4.6 per cent among women.
While chronic respiratory diseases are responsible for approximately 1.73 per cent of deaths, out of which 1.92 per cent are men and 1.5 per cent women.
