Open Journal of Air Pollution, 2023, 12, 50-66 https://www.scirp.org/journal/ojap ISSN Online: 2169-2661 ISSN Print: 2169-2653 DOI: 10.4236/ojap.2023.122003 Jun. 19, 2023 50 Open Journal of Air Pollution Impact of Improved Cookstoves on the Level of Household Exposure to CO and PM 2.5 in Sub-Saharan Cities: The Case of the City of Ouagadougou Lucmane Koala 1 , Kayaba Haro 1,2 , Ousmane Coulibaly 1 , Bernard Nana 1,3 , Issoufou Ouarma 1 , Edwige Ouedraogo 2 , Tizane Daho 1 , Oumar Sanogo 2 , Antoine Béré 1 1 Laboratoire de Physique et de Chimie de l’Environnement (LPCE), Université Joseph KI-ZERBO, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso 2 Institut de Recherche en Sciences Appliquées et Technologie (IRSAT), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique et Technologique (CNRST), Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso 3 Institut Des Sciences (IDS), Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso Abstract 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 (PM 2.5 ) emit- ted by improved cookstoves (ICS) or traditional cookstoves (TCS). A cross- sectional study was conducted in the city of Ouagadougou for 4 months dur- ing the rainy season (July to October) in households with an outdoor kitchen. The investigation involved 92 households where air pollutants, such as PM 2.5 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 PM 2.5 and CO for all type of stoves. Wood stoves led to higher PM 2.5 and lower CO emissions than charcoal stoves. ICS reduce emissions of indoor air pollutants compared to TCS. This reduction raised up to 82% for PM 2.5 and 37% for CO. The anal- ysis of the data measured with the student test (t-test) shows that there is a statistically significant difference between the average values of the concen- trations 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 regard- less of the type of cookstoves used. The CO exposure obtained varies from 119.10 to 362.72 μg/m 3 for 15-minute and 10.83 - 55.11 μg/m 3 for 1-hour ex- posure. The exposure in PM 2.5 varies from 4762 to 16,257 μg/m 3 for 15-minute and 106.63 to 1597 μg/m 3 for 1-hour of exposure. It was noted that the CO How to cite this paper: Koala, L., Haro, K., Coulibaly, O., Nana, B., Ouarma, I., Oue- draogo, E., Daho, T., Sanogo, O. and Béré, A. (2023) Impact of Improved Cookstoves on the Level of Household Exposure to CO and PM 2.5 in Sub-Saharan Cities: The Case of the City of Ouagadougou. Open Journal of Air Pollution, 12, 50-66. https://doi.org/10.4236/ojap.2023.122003 Received: March 16, 2023 Accepted: June 16, 2023 Published: June 19, 2023 Copyright © 2023 by author(s) and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access