[Biofuel] Smoke -- the killer in the kitchen
http://www.itdg.org/?id=smoke_index Download full report (4.7Mb Acrobat file): http://www.itdg.org/?id=smoke_report_home#Download Summary of the report http://www.itdg.org/?id=smoke_report_home Read the report online http://www.itdg.org/?id=smoke_report_1 WHO statement on indoor air pollution http://www.itdg.org/?id=iap_who http://www.itdg.org/?id=smoke_index ITDG - Intermediate Technology Development Group Indoor Air Pollution in Developing Countries Smoke - the killer in the kitchen Smoke in the home from cooking on wood, dung and crop waste kills nearly one million children a year. The total annual death toll is 1.6 million - a life lost every 20 seconds. It is a larger killer than malaria and is the fourth greatest risk to death and disease in the world's poorest countries. Despite this, little has been done to tackle this chronic crisis. In its report, Smoke: the Killer in the Kitchen, ITDG is calling for global action to save the lives of 1.6 million men, women and children lost each year to lethal levels of household smoke. * Summary of the report * Read the report online * Download the report * Buy a copy from ITDG Publishing * Find out more: key questions and answers * Further information * Links The problem More than a third of humanity, 2.4 billion people, burn biomass (wood, crop residues, charcoal and dung) for cooking and heating. When coal is included a total of 3 billion people - half the world's population - cook with solid fuel. The smoke from burning these fuels turns kitchens in the world's poorest countries into death traps. Particles from fuels like wood and charcoal make lungs vulnerable to acute lower respiratory infections, such as pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or cancer. In addition there is evidence to link indoor air pollution to asthma, tuberculosis, low birth weight and infant mortality and cataracts. While the world spends millions of dollars combating levels of pollution in Western cities, it has neglected to tackle the death toll caused by lethal levels of smoke in the homes of the poor world. What can be done The scale of the problem is immense. What is needed is a global campaign that matches the level of this chronic problem, in line with the international community's response to hunger, HIV/AIDS, dirty water, poor sanitation and malaria. Read ITDG's call for a Global Action Plan However, there are solutions - and they need not cost the earth. ITDG has worked with communities in Kenya, Sudan and Nepal to develop improved stoves, smoke hoods, chimneys and improved ventilation. You can read about our work in these countries, and see how simple technology - affordable, accessible and appropriate - can make a real difference to people's lives. Smoke and health in Kenya In the Kajiado region of Kenya, ITDG has been working with Maasai women to develop a simple smoke hood, which has reduced smoke levels by up to 80%. Smoke and health in Sudan In Kassala, eastern Sudan, an ITDG project is working with households to develop solutions to indoor air pollution, including a switch to LPG. Smoke and health in Nepal In Nepal ITDG has been working with the community to develop improvements in home insulation and stove design to reduce fuel use. In the past, one of the excuses for inaction on household smoke has been that there was insufficient medical evidence of its impact. There is now ample evidence. And as we have shown, there are also simple and effective ways of reducing levels of smoke. What is missing is the political will to act. ITDG is calling on the United Nations to instigate a Global Action Plan to address the neglected killer of indoor air pollution, and to back the newly formed Partnership for Clean Indoor Air with the necessary resources and political will. This partnership, which is backed by the World Health Organisation, the World Bank, the US Environmental Protection Agency and others, is beginning to turn around the inaction on smoke in the home, but needs high-level political and financial support if it is to have a significant impact. Read the report online You can buy a copy of the report from ITDG Publishing, download it as a PDF file, or read it online as web pages: Executive summary Smoke - the killer in the kitchen * A crisis affecting mainly poor women and children * Smoke and the Millennium Development Goals Smoke's increasing cloud across the globe * Why has so little been done? * How smoke kills and injures * Exposure in poor homes far exceeds accepted safety levels * Researching how smoke affects health * Health effects of indoor air pollution Reducing exposure to indoor air pollution * Cooking on a cleaner fuel * Getting smoke out of the house * Cutting smoke volumes * Reducing the need for fire * Changing patterns of behaviour * Heating the home * Identifying appropriate solutions Weighing up the cost of smoke
Re: [Biofuel] Smoke -- the killer in the kitchen
Smoke -- the killer in the kitchen http://www.itdg.org/?id=smoke_index and is not just the kitchens of the developing countries... http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/story.jsp?story=601500 Pollution during pregnancy is linked to childhood cancer By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor 17 January 2005 Women who breathe air polluted with smoke and exhaust fumes are up to four times more likely to have children who develop cancer, a study shows. Research at the University of Birmingham suggests atmospheric pollution from oil-fired furnaces and vehicle exhausts may be the principal cause of childhood cancer. By linking pollution hot spots round the country with the incidence of cancer, the findings show that pregnant women and those about to conceive who live near factories, power stations or major road junctions are at greatest risk. The study, in the /Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health/, will fuel speculation about the causes of childhood cancer which have baffled scientists for decades. Cancer is a defect of cell division associated with ageing, but studies in children with leukaemia have shown that cancer cells are present from birth, suggesting the origins of the disease may lie in the womb. Heredity, radiation and viruses are among the suggested causes. Some experts say childhood leukaemia, the commonest childhood cancer, is increasing, though the claim is disputed. If a rise in childhood cancer is confirmed, the increase in vehicle pollution could be a cause. George Knox, emeritus professor of epidemiology, who made the study, said: Most childhood cancers are probably initiated by close perinatal encounters with one or more of these high emission sources. The low atmospheric levels of these substances suggest the mother may breathe them in, with carcinogens passing across the placenta. He added that direct exposures in early infancy, or through breast milk, or even pre-conceptually, cannot be excluded. Professor Knox compared a map showing chemical emissions for the UK prepared by the National Atmospheric Emissions Laboratory with details of all children who died of leukaemia and other cancers before their 16th birthday between 1966 and 1980. The scientist said: The evidence from this set of data is that these exposures account for half or more of cancers in childhood. This needs to be pursued with further research and we need to separate people from the sources of pollution and to reduce toxic emissions. 18 January 2005 12:39 Search this site: printable versionPrintable Story http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=601500host=3dir=59 -- -- Bob Allen,http://ozarker.org/bob -- - The modern conservative is engaged in one of Man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness JKG --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] ___ Biofuel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://wwia.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/biofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel archives at Infoarchive.net (searchable): http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/
Re: [biofuel] Smoke - the killer in the kitchen
This was the last paragraph on the article about smoke as an indoor air pollutant. MDG 7 - Some of the interventions to reduce indoor air pollution can result in the more efficient use of wood fuel and therefore contribute to a lessening in greenhouse gas emissions and the conservation of forest areas - thereby contributing to environmental sustainability. Surprisingly, even switching from inefficient use of biomass to fossil fuel (kerosene or LPG) can reduce climate impact, as it can conserve forestry and emit less greenhouse gas than inefficiently burned biofuels. It's curious to me that we're still talking about fewer greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels than more recent biofuels. My initial reaction (please correct me if I'm wrong) is that we're working on such a large time scale with fossil fuels and such a small time scale with biofuels like wood and dung that carbon emissions from fossil fuels cost us as greenhouse gases, but similar carbon emissions from fuels which recently absorbed their carbon from the atmosphere may be considered carbon neutral. This is an over-simplification of course, because we care about more atmospheric contaminants that CO2 and CO, and wood burning at low temperatures is a really great way to produce harmful emissions. But I think we SHOULD stop talking about greenhouse gases and particulate emissions and NOx emissions and sulfuric compounds and all those other more complicated byproducts of combustion as the really-bad-problem-related-to-industrialization-that-rich-and-smart-people-in-the-first-world-should-find-alternatives-to-for-poor-people-in-the-third-world. The question is, how much can we just talk about carbon dioxide absorption and release into the atmosphere from growing and burning biomass? It's certainly a nice way to simplify the matter, and biofuels come out miles ahead. I look at my wood stove (yes, even with expensive catalytic converter) still spewing lots of smoke into the clear Vermont air. The appropriate solution for us 10 years ago was a wood stove that was as clean as possible but not ultra-expensive. I love burning wood from a 10 mile radius of the house, and I love that it's carbon-neutral, but there's so much more coming out of the stove pipe that we rarely talk about. I remember seeing Juneau, Alaska, USA when I was a kid in winter, with a wood smoke affect similar to that of Los Angeles. Cleaner, more attractive, inexpensive, safe, etc. solutions? Well, biodiesel or SVO in furnaces sounds like a good start if you have a furnace. wood-fired boiler for DHW and heating (and cooking?). pellet stoves...I think there will end up being a lot of different solutions appropriate for different places. Thats how it should be, of course, but when there's a showroom full of hundreds of models of a few designs for heaters and stoves (cooking), the population has to be a little more educated to buy something to get off the fossil fuel grid. (My first public ramble here. I hope at least one of you found it interesting.) -Aaron Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark Printer at MyInks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US Canada. http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511 http://us.click.yahoo.com/mOAaAA/3exGAA/qnsNAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/index.php?list=biofuel Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[biofuel] Smoke - the killer in the kitchen
http://www.itdg.org/html/smoke/smoke_report_1.htm Download report: http://www.itdg.org/html/smoke/smoke_report.htm#Download Indoor Air Pollution in Developing Countries Smoke - the killer in the kitchen Poverty condemns half of humanity to cook with solid fuels on inefficient stoves. Smoke in homes from these cook stoves is the fourth greatest risk factor for death and disease in the world's poorest countries, and is linked to 1.6 million deaths per year. Yet the international community has largely neglected it. Women and children are most at risk from the killer in the kitchen, as they spend considerable time around the cooking fire. Reducing indoor air pollution across the developing world would contribute significantly to achieving the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goals, in particular the aim to reduce child mortality by two-thirds by 2015. More than a third of humanity, 2.4 billion people, use biomass (wood, crop residues, charcoal and dung) for cooking and heating. Of these, approximately 800 million depend solely on crop residues and dung. It is a technology that has changed little since the Stone Age. When coal is included a total of 3 billion people - approximately half the world's population - cook with solid fuel. The smoke from burning these fuels in the home is one of the four leading causes of death and disease in the world's poorest countries. The indoor air pollution from the burning of solid fuels is linked to the deaths of over 1.6 million people, predominately women and children, each year. This is more than three people per minute. It is a death toll almost as great as that caused by dirty water and poor sanitation, and greater than malaria. Smoke in the home is one of the world's leading child killers, claiming nearly one million children's lives each year. Illness caused by smoke kills more children annually than malaria or HIV/AIDS. The most recent figures from the World Health Organization (WHO) show that in developing countries where mortality is high, the four greatest risks leading to death, disease and injury are being underweight, unsafe sex, unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene and smoke from solid fuel. Three of these risks are the subject of wide-ranging campaigns and programmes, albeit massively under funded. Being underweight, unsafe sex, and unsafe water and sanitation are well known as the principal causes of death and disease. It is an international scandal that relatively little is known and done about the impacts of indoor air pollution. The World Health Report 2002 carries a breakdown of the causes of death and disease around the world. Figure 1 indicates the total number of deaths in the world attributable to these leading health risks, and also shows the impact of ill health and disability (measured in DALYs) in the world's poorest countries where mortality is highest. Figure 1: World Health Report's estimates of death and ill-health (DALYs) from leading risk factors in the year 2000 Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) The WHO and World Bank measure health risks according to a disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) formula. DALYs estimate life years lost from disease and injuries and the subsequent disability over the remaining years. It is a measure that allows comparison of health interventions across various life threatening diseases. The main victims of death from exposure to indoor air pollution are women and children. Children aged under five account for 56 per cent of total deaths from indoor air pollution. The main cause of children's death from indoor air pollution is acute lower respiratory infections (ALRI). At 2.1 million deaths a year, ALRI is the world's leading killer of children under five. More than 50 per cent of these deaths are caused by indoor air pollution, lack of adequate heating and other precarious living conditions. Figure 2: Deaths in the under-fives by various causes Recently the UN General Assembly restated their aim to control malaria. It is interesting to parallel the scale of the problems presented by malaria and indoor air pollution. Twenty per cent of the world's population are at risk from malaria; almost 50% are at risk from indoor air pollution. Malaria kills about one million people per year; indoor air pollution kills over 1.6 million. Quite rightly there is a major international campaign to fight malaria. This report argues for a similar worldwide campaign for healthy indoor air. A crisis affecting mainly poor women and children Indoor air pollution is nothing new. As the smoke-stained walls and ceilings of caves occupied by prehistoric man attest, smoke has been a fact of life for millennia. Living without smoke is inconceivable for many people in developing countries. The vast majority of staple foods, 95%, need cooking before they can be eaten. Cooking needs energy. This is not an indiscriminate killer. Indoor air pollution
