New Research Seeks Solutions to Pollution from Open Cook Fires

02 November 2012

A woman cooks over an open fire in Ghana.

Cooking on open fires and its impact on air quality and human health are the target of a three-year study launched by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The results could point to the best means for a transition to cleaner cooking methods.

Atmospheric scientists, engineers, statisticians and social scientists will be working not only on the air quality issues, but also will evaluate the social, cultural and economic factors that could influence families’ willingness to adopt new household habits to use cookstoves that generate fewer emissions.

NCAR lead scientist Christine Wiedinmyer said pollutants and particles spewed by open fires are a proven health risk to individuals, to villages and entire regions. This study will be the first to consider the implementation of solutions from the family level up to a regional scale, she said.

The air pollutants emitted by open-fire cooking are thought to be the cause of 2 million deaths each year, primarily among women and children who spend the most time at fireside. The use of wood, animal and agricultural waste as fuel for cooking and warming homes can lead to long-term respiratory and cardiovascular problems and other ailments, such as headaches and nausea.

With support from NCAR, which is sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the project will apply newly developed air-quality sensors with computer and statistical models to accumulate precise effects of open fires on individuals and regions.

“Often when you visit remote villages in Ghana, they’re shrouded in haze for many miles from all the fires used for cooking,” said Wiedinmyer, an atmospheric chemist. “Given that an estimated 3 billion people worldwide are cooking over fire and smoke, we need to better understand how these pollutants are affecting public health as well as regional air quality and even the climate.”

The University of Ghana School of Public Health and Ghana Health Services join NCAR and the University of Colorado-Boulder as partners in the research.

Though open fires are widely known to be a principal source of carbon monoxide, particulates and smog in developing countries where they are used, these researchers will use a combination of local and regional air quality measurements to develop more specific data than are currently available. They will also try to learn how the open-fire emissions are affecting weather patterns that could contribute to global warming.

“Bringing together an international disciplinary team of social scientists with climatologists, atmospheric chemists and engineers to tackle the problem is the first step in addressing these complex human-environmental problems,” said NCAR medical anthropologist Mary Hayden.

The U.S. departments of Energy and State were among the founding members of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, organized in 2010 and led by the United Nations Foundation. More than 400 public and private partners, including 34 national governments, have joined the effort to save lives and reduce pollution. The alliance also intends to improve livelihoods and empower women by creating a global market for clean and efficient household cooking solutions.

Though the health hazards of open-air cooking provide reason enough for a transition to solar-powered or gas-powered stoves, further lifestyle reasons justify the need for change. Women spend considerable time in the search for fuel, in many places spending time that could be devoted to more productive and income-producing activities. Children often join their mothers in this chore, which can become even more dangerous in volatile or violence-prone areas where they might risk assault.

The Alliance for Clean Cookstoves has set a goal of “100 by 20,” which calls for 100 million homes to adopt clean and efficient stoves and fuels by 2020.