Bangkok--29 Aug--AIT
Simple cooking stoves used across the region and in Vietnam are polluting, inefficient and hazardous to poor people’s health, says one award-winning Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) student. Indeed, across Asia’s developing countries home cooking and heating powered by dirty solid fuels are a leading cause of indoor air pollution that adversely impacts millions.
High levels of particulates and gases emitted from stoves inside poor households are linked to persistent cough, phlegm, breathlessness and wheezing, and to cardiovascular diseases and lung cancer. Studies also indicate that the pollutants are one of the four greatest factors causing death in developing countries, and are linked to 1.6 million deaths annually, primarily to women and children.
According to scientists, the inefficient indoor stoves also consume more fuel and generate higher emissions than the energy they produce. Moreover, the indoor air pollutants eventually escape outside and contribute to worsening regional and global climate change.
AIT environmental engineering and management (EEM) graduate student Mr. Nguyen Hong Phuc, therefore, decided to research this monumental problem by assessing the situation in the Red River region of his native Vietnam.
Recently, in May this year, a paper he co-authored based on his larger AIT Master’s thesis earned the 28-year-old Hanoi native a Best Master’s Student paper award from the West Coast Section — Air and Waste Management Association based in the United States.
For the former lecturer at Hanoi University of Science, it was his first international recognition. But Phuc is actually the latest award-winner from the air quality research group of EEM; a field of study accustomed to seeing its students crop competitive honors.
In winning paper “Assessment of Air Quality and Climate Co-benefit for Residential Combustion Sector in the red River Delta, Vietnam,” written along with his advisor Dr. Nguyen Thi Kim Oanh, Phuc evaluated air quality and climate co-benefits possible for rural areas under different fuel-usage scenarios.
Vietnam’s population is 70 percent rural. It is estimate that about a third of Vietnam’s energy consumption is from traditional biomass and waste, and nearly 60 percent of the biomass is consumed by households, mainly in the countryside.
Based on his research conducted in 2011, Phuc found evidence that reducing indoor air pollutants led to the “win-win” result of increased air quality at local levels and decreased emissions of greenhouses gases at the global scale.
This finding was achieved through a device set up to monitor how much carbon dioxide equivalent could be reduced in the defined rural locality, and through a survey, he said.
“By studying one common area in the Red River region, I was able to identify what kind of fuel or mix of fuels is the most environmentally suitable,” Phuc said. “I propose a combination of rice-straw and liquefied petroleum gas as the best option.”
Phuc is now working on his on his doctorate at AIT made possible through financial support from the Government of Norway. He says he intends to continue along a research path laid by his earlier work. “My final destination is to understand the impact air pollution has on human health through objective quantitative analysis.”
Photo caption: Dr. Nguyen Thi Kim Oanh presents the Air & Waste Management Association (AWMA) award to Mr. Nguyen Hong Phuc at AIT as students from the air quality research group of EEM look on.