2026-04-27 · people

Solid fuels still poison indoor air

Wood and dung fires cook dinner — and fill lungs with particulates.

As of 2026, about 2.1 billion people — 26% of the world's 8.2 billion — still cook over open fires or inefficient stoves burning wood, dung, charcoal, coal or kerosene. In poorly ventilated homes that smoke can reach fine-particle levels 100 times above acceptable, and WHO tied household air pollution to 2.9 million deaths in 2021.

1 cell = 8.2 million people (0.1% of world population) · 1,000 cells

Context

Access is deeply uneven: in 2021, 14% of urban residents relied on polluting fuels versus 49% of the global rural population. Sub-Saharan Africa is the epicentre — 923 million people there lacked clean cooking in 2022 as population growth outpaced progress.

Women and children pay the highest price, spending the most time near the hearth. Household air pollution contributed to 44% of pneumonia deaths among children under 5, and more than 309,000 children that age died in 2021 from illnesses linked to polluting cooking.

On current trends, only 78% of the world will have clean cooking by 2030, leaving nearly 1.8 billion people exposed. WHO counts LPG, electricity, solar, biogas, natural gas and alcohol fuels as clean, and points to subsidies, better ventilation and adoption campaigns as levers.

WHO / IEA clean cooking access ~74% — inverse for polluting.