Source · material
Charcoal
Part of: Indoor fuel combustion
Also: char, charcoal burning, charcoal stove
Wood that has been charred to drive off its volatile fraction, then burned as fuel. It smokes far less than the wood it came from, which is why it is preferred indoors — and it produces more carbon monoxide per unit of heat, which is why that preference is dangerous.
Where it comes from indoors
Charcoal is made by heating wood with little air until the volatile fraction is driven off and almost pure carbon remains. That is what makes it attractive: it lights easily, burns steadily, and gives off little visible smoke, so a charcoal brazier can be used in a room where a wood fire would be unbearable.
The hazard follows from the same chemistry. Carbon burning with a limited air supply produces carbon monoxide, a gas with no smell and no irritancy, and a brazier used indoors — for cooking, for heating, or brought inside after grilling because it is still warm — has caused fatal poisonings in every country where the practice exists. The absence of smoke removes the warning the smoke would have given.
Charcoal production also matters outside the home: the kiln releases what the wood lost.
What the studies report
12 of 21 Findings — those with the strongest study design.
| Linked to | Effect | Population | Study design | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carbon monoxide (CO) | mean 18 | primary cooks · personal exposure of the primary cook in the household | quasi-experimental evaluation of two improved cookstove programmes in Lusaka, Zambia: 24-hour personal exposure to carbon monoxide (747 measurements) and PM2.5 (90) of primary cooks at baseline in the cool season of 2019 and at endline in the warm season, with difference-in-differences and generalised least squares models of log-transformed exposure against stove group, season, neighbourhood, cooking location, ventilation, stove-influenced hours and expenditure | F-0712 Impacts of Improved Cookstove Interventions on Personal Expo… (2025) | machine |
| Carbon monoxide (CO) | mean 14 | primary cooks · personal exposure of the primary cook in the household | quasi-experimental evaluation of two improved cookstove programmes in Lusaka, Zambia: 24-hour personal exposure to carbon monoxide (747 measurements) and PM2.5 (90) of primary cooks at baseline in the cool season of 2019 and at endline in the warm season, with difference-in-differences and generalised least squares models of log-transformed exposure against stove group, season, neighbourhood, cooking location, ventilation, stove-influenced hours and expenditure | F-0713 Impacts of Improved Cookstove Interventions on Personal Expo… (2025) | machine |
| Carbon monoxide (CO) | mean 14 | primary cooks · personal exposure of the primary cook in the household | quasi-experimental evaluation of two improved cookstove programmes in Lusaka, Zambia: 24-hour personal exposure to carbon monoxide (747 measurements) and PM2.5 (90) of primary cooks at baseline in the cool season of 2019 and at endline in the warm season, with difference-in-differences and generalised least squares models of log-transformed exposure against stove group, season, neighbourhood, cooking location, ventilation, stove-influenced hours and expenditure | F-0714 Impacts of Improved Cookstove Interventions on Personal Expo… (2025) | machine |
| Carbon monoxide (CO) | mean 9 | primary cooks · personal exposure of the primary cook in the household | quasi-experimental evaluation of two improved cookstove programmes in Lusaka, Zambia: 24-hour personal exposure to carbon monoxide (747 measurements) and PM2.5 (90) of primary cooks at baseline in the cool season of 2019 and at endline in the warm season, with difference-in-differences and generalised least squares models of log-transformed exposure against stove group, season, neighbourhood, cooking location, ventilation, stove-influenced hours and expenditure | F-0715 Impacts of Improved Cookstove Interventions on Personal Expo… (2025) | machine |
| Birth weight | difference 429 (259–599) | — · home | cohort study of pregnant women: the household cooking fuel and household garbage burning during pregnancy related to fetal growth and to low birth weight, against households using liquefied petroleum gas only | F-1694 Cooking fuel choices and garbage burning practices as determ… (2012) | machine |
| Nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) | other 0.053 | households cooking indoors · kitchen | measurement of kitchen NO2, SO2 and CO in three selected households per sampling area (firewood, charcoal and LPG as cooking fuel) across four zones of Ilorin South, Nigeria, with a regression model of fuel, zone and time of day | F-0681 Assessment of Kitchen Air Pollution: Health Implications for… (2022) | machine |
| Nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) | other 0.122 | households cooking indoors · kitchen | measurement of kitchen NO2, SO2 and CO in three selected households per sampling area (firewood, charcoal and LPG as cooking fuel) across four zones of Ilorin South, Nigeria, with a regression model of fuel, zone and time of day | F-0682 Assessment of Kitchen Air Pollution: Health Implications for… (2022) | machine |
| Nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) | difference 0.039 | households cooking indoors · kitchen | measurement of kitchen NO2, SO2 and CO in three selected households per sampling area (firewood, charcoal and LPG as cooking fuel) across four zones of Ilorin South, Nigeria, with a regression model of fuel, zone and time of day | F-0685 Assessment of Kitchen Air Pollution: Health Implications for… (2022) | machine |
| Carbon monoxide (CO) | mean 7.6 | — · kitchen | cross-sectional monitoring in rural Paraguay: 24-hour time-integrated PM2.5 and continuous carbon monoxide in kitchens that cooked with wood on a three-stone fire, with charcoal in a metal brazier, with liquefied petroleum gas or with electricity, plus questionnaires and multivariable regression models of the two pollutants | F-0812 Monitoring and modeling of household air quality related to … (2019) | machine |
| Particulate matter (PM₂.₅ and PM₁₀) | mean 107.0 | — · kitchen | cross-sectional monitoring in rural Paraguay: 24-hour time-integrated PM2.5 and continuous carbon monoxide in kitchens that cooked with wood on a three-stone fire, with charcoal in a metal brazier, with liquefied petroleum gas or with electricity, plus questionnaires and multivariable regression models of the two pollutants | F-0816 Monitoring and modeling of household air quality related to … (2019) | machine |
| Particulate matter (PM₂.₅ and PM₁₀) | median 25.7 | adults in a rural village · personal exposure of the participant in the household | observational study in a rural village of Malawi: twenty adults wore paired personal PM2.5 and carbon-monoxide monitors for 831 hours in total, with a structured activity diary, and exposures were split into activity peaks and background periods and modelled against fuel, stove and place of cooking | F-0893 Personal exposures to fine particulate matter and carbon mon… (2022) | machine |
| Carbon monoxide (CO) | median 5.0 | adults in a rural village · personal exposure of the participant in the household | observational study in a rural village of Malawi: twenty adults wore paired personal PM2.5 and carbon-monoxide monitors for 831 hours in total, with a structured activity diary, and exposures were split into activity peaks and background periods and modelled against fuel, stove and place of cooking | F-0895 Personal exposures to fine particulate matter and carbon mon… (2022) | machine |
Each row is one Finding — a sentence as printed in one study, recorded with its page in the Coridum Knowledge Base. Follow the Finding number for the exact wording and the citation. Checked says who verified the row: machine means every automatic check passed and the surrounding text was read; person means someone read the sentence in the document. Rows are re-checked by a person over time. The studies are curated in the Coridum Knowledge Base; the reading of them together is a Claim, shown separately.
Identifiers
- MeSH
- D002606
Cite this page
Coridum Research. Charcoal. Coridum Knowledge G-0117, 16 September 2026. https://coridum.com/k/G-0117/