While cooking can be considered a safe practice in
most of the Western world, it is a potential lethal activity in other regions.
“Cooking a meal is the biggest environmental health
risk in the world,” said Radha Muthiah, executive director at Global Alliance
for Clean Cookstoves.
Her organization estimates that three billion
people around the world rely for cooking on solid fuels like wood, coal,
charcoal, and animal dung.
“Three billion people risk death, sickness, and
injury from a number of issues associated with the seemingly simple act of
cooking. Four million people die annually—meaning that after high blood
pressure, alcohol, and tobacco, household air pollution from cooking smoke is
the biggest killer in the world,” Muthiah said.
Coal is the most commonly sold fuel when it comes
to household energy and solid fuels are mostly burned in open fires and other
primitive stoves with inadequate ventilation, which expose the families to
toxic indoor smoke, according to an article in the ACS journal Environmental
Science & Technology.
The primitive stoves also affect global warming, as
millions of tons of soot are spreading into the atmosphere.
A clean cookstove can reduce carbon emissions by up
to three tons per year, according to the Global Alliance of Clean Cookstoves.
“With women serving as the cooks in most developing
countries, usually with their small children at their side, household air
pollution (HAP) causes a range of cancers, heart and lung diseases, cataracts
and developmental and neurological impacts,” Radha said.
Women and children are also spending a lot of time
collecting fuel, one of the duties that makes them too busy at home to attend
school. Girls spend as much as twenty hours per week collecting fuels.
In many Sub-Saharan African countries, almost every
household rely on solid fuel and also in South Asia and Southeast Asia a lot of
people use these primitive stoves. In India, household air pollution from
cooking is the leading health risk factor.
Various experts and governments have tried to
tackle this problem with various results and in 2010, secretary Clinton
launched the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves led by the United Nations
Foundation to deal with this problem.
“Today, the alliance is made up of more than 650
partners across six continents, all working toward the goal of hundred million
households adopting clean cookstoves and fuels by 2020,” Radha said.
To reach this goal, various actions have taken
place, such as commissioning research to underscore the problem, and the
solutions that are proven to work; establishing the first-ever international
standards to define cookstove safety, cleanliness and efficiency; conducting
in-country market assessments; supporting testing centers worldwide; linking
investors with cookstove entrepreneurs and many other activities.
“The countries in which the Alliance has targeted
its resources at this stage include Bangladesh, China, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria
and Uganda,” Radha said.
Changing to cleaner stoves will have a huge impact
on both people and the environment. It can reduce fuel consumption and exposure
to cookstove smoke, which will lead to a much better health and a healthier
environment.
“By involving women in every aspect of the
cookstoves value chain,” Radha said, “we can spur the level of adoption of
clean cooking solutions that is necessary to one day move from saying ‘cooking
shouldn’t kill’ to ‘cooking doesn’t kill.’”
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