Several eminent personalities and experts from Hydrocarbon Sector including Mr. Ashutosh Jindal, Jt. Secretary (M&GP), Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, Govt. of India, amongst other distinguished participants attended the lecture. The talk emphasized the health benefits by switch over from biomass to LPG for cooking and gave a global perspective on the health of the world’s poor.

Prof. Smith said, “Typical biomass cook stove releases 400 cigarettes per hour worth of smoke. The percentage of air pollution mortality from household fuels like biomass in India is 25-50 %, compared to global level of 14-30 %”.

The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Prof. Smith mentioned that in the year 1990 around 700 Million (85%) and in the year 2010 still around 700 million (60%) people were using the solid fuels for cooking.

During his talk, Prof. Smith lauded Govt. of India’s initiative of Rs. 8000 crores spending in three years solely on providing clean fuels to India’s poor. However, he said that more efforts are still needed to encourage more usage of LPG especially in rural areas.

Earlier, while delivering the welcome address, Dr. R.K. Malhotra, Director General, PetroFed said, “According to WHO rule of 1000 a pollutant released indoors is one thousand times more likely to reach people's lungs than a pollutant released outdoors”. Dr. Malhotra added that, we need to have a long term strategy for providing affordable access to LPG or other clean fuel to every citizen of our country.