Dirty Fuels: A Global Health Crisis
A move to clean cooking creates benefits to local economies, education, civil rights and more.
But all of those benefits circle back to one key issue: health.
The sad truth is that for 3 billion people worldwide, the daily act of preparing their family meals is causing sickness and likely shortening their lifespans.
Dirty fuels in the home
Michael Johnson, Technical Director of Berkeley Air Monitoring Group, said many of the most serious problems for health from dirty cooking fuels are associated with particulate matter.
“Particulate matter has the strongest evidence for health impacts. It’s got a very deep evidence base,” he said. “You name the disease and particulates are typically associated with that health outcome.”
Cooking with dirty fuel sources is particularly damaging because of the proximity of people to those emissions, as opposed to most other emissions in the world. Women and children, who are already tasked with up to 20 hours per week procuring and carrying heavy loads of fuel, also spend more time in the home and are typically responsible for cooking and cleaning. They are exposed to these emissions on a daily basis at a level two to four times that of men, disproportionately increasing their disease load.
While most emissions have an opportunity to diffuse in the air before being inhaled, cooking fuels are often confined within the walls of a home.
“When you think of emissions sources elsewhere, they are often coming out of a stack or located further from where people are breathing,” Johnson said.
Household air pollution causes multiple diseases
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), household air pollution (HAP) is a serious issue for the world. “Over 3.8 million people a year die prematurely from illness attributable to the household air pollution caused by the inefficient use of solid fuels and kerosene for cooking,” the organization states on their website.
The causes of those deaths are estimated as follows:
27% due to pneumonia
18% from stroke
27% from ischaemic heart disease
20% from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
8% from lung cancer
What is known as “black carbon,” or more commonly, “soot” within fine particulate matter is especially problematic. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency notes that black carbon is small enough to be easily inhaled and is associated with “asthma, and other respiratory problems, low birth rates, heart attacks and lung cancer.” Globally, approximately 25% of black carbon is produced from household energy use like cooking and heating; household cooking in many Asian and African countries can result in as much as 80% of total black carbon emissions.
Johnson notes that not only does black carbon hurt people home-to-home in many communities, the cumulative effect creates additional problems for the atmosphere.
“Three billion people burning wood and charcoal and dung … You add all that up across the globe and a that is a lot of black carbon being emitted into the atmosphere,” he said.
Alternatives make a huge difference
Cooking with clean-burning bioethanol makes an immediate difference in household air pollution. The eyeball test alone tells a dramatic story. When bioethanol is burned, it is virtually invisible because of the relative lack of soot in its emissions.
Of course, the eyeball test is not enough. Research confirms what our eyes tell us.
“Every lab study I’ve seen shows it (bioethanol) burns as cleanly as other gas fuels,” Johnson said, noting that “it’s harder for fuels like bioethanol to burn uncleanly, compared to solid fuels which have a much wider range of combustion performance. Cleaner fuel performance is relatively consistent. That’s a good thing.”
One study by University of California - Berkeley and the Center for Entrepreneurship in International Health and Development observed an 84% reduction in kitchen PM2.5 [fine particulates] and a 76% reduction in carbon monoxide for households after bioethanol clean cooking stoves were introduced.
Communicating these benefits can be a challenge. Johnson said that health effects are not typically the most compelling reason to get people to change to clean cooking fuels, even though it is perhaps the most significant issue. Benefits such as cost, having a cleaner kitchen, or being able to have the family together while cooking are often better motivators of change.
Regardless of how the benefits are sold to communities, a transition is desperately needed.
Like Pivot, WHO is committed to ensuring access to clean fuel and technologies that will provide a healthy future for countless families around the world.
“Achieving this goal could prevent millions of deaths and improve the health and well-being of the billions of people relying on polluting technologies and fuels for cooking, heating, and lighting.” (Heather Adair-Rohani, Technical Lead on Energy and Health, WHO)
