generalspeaking

Polluting Primitive Cookstoves

Who might imagine such a thing? People have been cooking over rudely-practical, makeshift 'stoves' for thousands of years, after all. People in third-world countries who use fragments of coal, wood, dried animal dung to produce heat to cook their meals. It would never occur to them to link ill health with the manner of their cooking. Stoves used within dwellings, stoves that produce carbon, deadly smoke that infiltrates the lungs and causes irremediable damage.

That damage to hearts and lungs afflicts mostly women and children, for they are the ones who are mostly within those dwellings, while men are more likely out and about. Cooking is primarily women's work. And minding the welfare of children, keeping them close to hand is also women's work. It has been estimated by a newly-published study out of the U.S. that these primitive stoves kill about two million people yearly.

That figure is greater than those who die around the globe on an annual basis from the deadly scourge of malaria. Three billion people worldwide cook indoors, using wood, charcoal, dung. The World Health organization characterizes this as the globe's top environmental killer. That smoke that emanates from the heating-and-cooking process causes pneumonia and chronic lung disease.

Programs have been launched to procure more efficient stoves for those living in remote and impoverished areas of the world. In an effort to improve health for such a great number of people. Girls would be free to attend primary schools instead of investing tedious hours scouring the landscape for fuel.

"Many people in developed countries don't realize that smoke from indoor cooking fires is a terrible scourge upon the health of a large number of people", commented the study's co-author, Francis Collins, director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

In Peru where the problem is endemic in the Andean highlands, 40% of women suffer from heart and chronic obstructive lung diseases. Up to 60% of area children are malnourished and suffer "relentless respiratory diseases". A program is underway sponsored by the country's Pilar Nores Bodereau, through an initiative helping community members to build better cookstoves, latrines and kitchen gardens.

About 500,000 people in the Andes have been assisted toward a more healthful way of life at a cost of $200 per family, resulting in a "substantial decrease in bronchopulmonary disease and a clear increase in the height/weight ratio of children under five years of age."

Labels: Health, Heritage, Human Rights, Social-Cultural Deviations

posted by Pieface @ Friday, October 14, 2011