The World Health Organization has spoken: Improved cookstoves are not clean enough

摘要

Improving the performance of cookstoves that burn solid fuels (e.g., wood, charcoal, crop residues, and dung) is a major theme of this journal. Generally, improvements are focused on one or more of the following objectives: 1. improving stove efficiency (i.e., output of useful heat per unit of fuel consumed); 2. decreasing emissions of outdoor air pollutants of local, regional, or global concern, and 3. decreasing the serious respiratory problems caused by indoor air pollution. What constitutes a sufficient improvement to meet these objectives is controversial. Some have argued that replacing solid fuels with gas or electricity is the most practical strategy; although doing this for' the roughly three billion people who rely on solid fuels is a daunting task.