Air pollution is one of the major global threats to human health. In Burkina
Faso, more than 80% of the population uses solid fuels as the main source of
cooking energy. This paper reports a comparative study on the exposure of
household to the carbon monoxide (CO) and particulate matter (PM2.5) emitted by improved cookstoves (ICS) or traditional cookstoves (TCS). A crosssectional study was conducted in the city of Ouagadougou for 4 months during the rainy season (July to October) in households with an outdoor kitchen.
The investigation involved 92 households where air pollutants, such as PM2.5
and CO were measured with Indoor Air Pollution Meters (IAP meter). These
measurements were focused on the concentration levels of the pollutants
during cooking. The results of this study show high levels of PM2.5 and CO for
all type of stoves. Wood stoves led to higher PM2.5 and lower CO emissions
than charcoal stoves. ICS reduce emissions of indoor air pollutants compared
to TCS. This reduction raised up to 82% for PM2.5 and 37% for CO. The analysis of the data measured with the student test (t-test) shows that there is a
statistically significant difference between the average values of the concentrations of the pollutants emitted with the TCS compared to ICS, except for
CO emissions measured on multi-pot sizes cookstoves (MM). This study
shows that the concentrations of indoor air pollutants are very high regardless of the type of cookstoves used. The CO exposure obtained varies from
119.10 to 362.72 µg/m3 for 15-minute and 10.83 - 55.11 µg/m3 for 1-hour exposure. The exposure in PM2.5 varies from 4762 to 16,257 µg/m3 for 15-minute
and 106.63 to 1597 µg/m3 for 1-hour of exposure. It was noted that the CO exposure levels obtained over 15-minute of exposure are 1.36 to 4.15 times
higher than the WHO recommendation and 1.8 times higher for an exposure
time of one hour. This means that women in charge of cooking have a high
risk of exposure to air pollutants.

Biomass, Cookstove, Particulate Matters