Cooking fuels used in the kitchens of Senior High Schools (SHSs) in Ghana affect air quality and have adverse health effects on an estimated half a million people in high school settings, a Study has shown. 

The Study identifies levels of emissions of particulate matter and some gaseous pollutants – carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and sulfur dioxide in the kitchen spaces after sampling SHSs using cook stoves in the Kumasi Metropolis. 

Prof Marian Asantewah Nkansah, the Lead Researcher and a Professor of Environmental Chemistry, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, said the team identified four cook stoves – traditional cook stoves, biomass, briquette, and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) in the selected schools. 

Speaking at an Annual Lecture in the Sciences 2025, themed: “Fuel for Thought: The Impact of Cooking Fuels on High School Kitchen Air Quality,” at the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, she said the emission levels of the pollutants in the kitchen spaces were above the threshold limits of the World Health Organisation (WHO) with the exception of an isolated case of LPG which was just for the particulate matter. 

All four cook stoves had levels above the threshold, and people exposed to these pollutants will suffer from non-carcinogenic effects. WHO has a standard level for every pollutant that the body can tolerate. So when it goes beyond that level, it means the person in that space is likely to suffer some health effects,” the Professor said.

She said the threshold always varied from pollutant to pollutant, adding that when the air quality index was also computed from the pollutants, it was ranked between hazardous to moderate for all the cookstoves. 

“So even with the LPG, it’s not as safe as we may expect in terms of use in the kitchen spaces. From the study, we determined particulate matter, which comes in PM 2.5, PM 10, and then gaseous pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and carbon monoxide were found,” the Lead Researcher added. 

The US Environmental Protection Agency says particulate matter (PM), also known as particle pollution, is the term for a mixture of solid particles and liquid droplets found in the air. Some particles, such as dust, dirt, soot, or smoke, are large or dark enough to be seen with the naked eye. 

Other particles, it says, are so small and can only be detected using an electron microscope. Particle pollution includes PM10, inhalable particles with diameters that are generally 10 micrometers and smaller, and PM2.5, fine inhalable particles with diameters that are generally 2.5 micrometers and smaller.

Prof Nkansah said: “Exposure to smoke and the emissions results in eye irritation, respiratory illnesses, and breathing-related diseases, and cardiovascular diseases. Indoor pollution is a major health risk in the 21st century, accounting for 80 per cent of human exposure to air pollutants and contributing to approximately 4 million premature deaths worldwide.”

“Commercial and institutional kitchens in countries like Ghana are among one-fourth of those global rely on solid fuels for various cooking activities. National efforts in Ghana to eradicate hunger in educational settings have transformed high school kitchens into one of the largest in the country,” she said.

Prof Nkansah said that despite the risks of acute and chronic exposure to indoor pollutants, the knowledge, perception, and awareness (KPA) of indoor air pollution in high school kitchens remained critically low or less documented. 

She said tackling the impact of cooking fuel on air quality in high school kitchens demanded a collaborative strategy where school management, parents, teacher associations, Ghana Education Service, local communities, energy suppliers, health professionals, and kitchen staff operated within a unified framework. 

“It is solely through these that the destructive cycle of poor kitchen air quality can be broken and a path towards healthy and sustainable school kitchen environments can be achieved,” the Professor said.