Parveena Khatun, 45, runs a tea stall on Baba Gangnath Marg in Delhi’s Munirka. The shortage of cooking gas cylinders has affected Parveena’s income.

When supplies fell in March, she kept her stall closed for a week but without the income, survival became difficult. Then, she built a brick stove (chulha), bought coal and gathered firewood. In Delhi’s intense summer, working throughout the day on a chulha is dangerous. Temperatures around the chulha remain high, leading to thermal discomfort and heat stress, and the set-up leaves Parveena gasping for breath at the end of the day. Her hands have burn marks—she’s never worked on a chulha before.

“Yesterday afternoon,” said Parveena, who moved to Delhi from Bihar’s Siwan in 2002, “the heat was so intense that between the smoke and the heat, I started feeling dizzy. I sat under a tree for a while and washed myself with cold water; my whole body was restless.” She was speaking of April 23, when Delhi saw a maximum temperature of 43°C.

The Commission for Air Quality Management issued an order on March 13, 2026, giving temporary permission to burn diesel and biomass (wood, dung cakes, and coal) and waste-derived fuel in Delhi-NCR, which has been extended until May 13, 2026.

Solid fuel like firewood, cow dung and dry grass are highly damaging to health, as IndiaSpend reported in April 2019. Cooking on traditional chulhas leads to incomplete combustion, and emission of particles such as suspended particulate matter, carbon monoxide, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, polyorganic matter and formaldehyde. All these are harmful for respiratory health.

Women and younger children who spend the most time at home are the most vulnerable, we had reported. Exposure to air pollution during pregnancy leads to outcomes such as low birth weight and stillbirth.

In 2022, India saw 113 deaths per 100,000 people due to household air pollution, according to the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change report 2025. For the estimated population of 1.46 billion that year, this works out to 1.65 million deaths from indoor pollution. Household air pollution also contributes to 22-52 percent of ambient air quality, studies suggest.

And this is before the effects of heat are considered.

Each time a woman cooks over a chulha in this heat, her body is fighting two battles at once—trying to cool down while also breathing in harmful smoke, explains Vidhya Venugopal, professor of occupational and environmental health at the Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research, Chennai. "It is a killer combination. This is far more dangerous than either problem alone and can quickly lead to........

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