21 January 2016. Wednesday, 07/01/2015 | 12:19 AM
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), toxic smoke from cook stoves is one of 5 leading threats to people health in developing countries, resulting in early death of nearly 4 million people all over the world every year, of which women and children are affected the most.
Using cook stoves with straw fuels is one of the potential threats to environment.
In 2002, WHO researched deeply on indoor pollution for the first time. The World Health Report ranked the danger of indoor exhausting smoke to human health only after dirty water and poor hygiene, being the biggest environment threats in developing countries. The report showed that, indoor pollution from cooking may be 10 times higher than pollution levels in the most pollutant cities around the world. In 2002, it’s estimated that nearly 2/3 of deaths in Asia Pacific region were related to the use of solid fuels for cooking. Furthermore, the use of wood, charcoal, straw and rice husks as firing fuels also increased forest devastation, caused decrease in living environment, increased pressure on natural resources of localities. Inefficient cook stoves also caused more increase in climate change as they emit into environment with black carbon and green house airs like CO2 and methane.
The said report also pointed out that with about 80% of Vietnamese households still using traditional ovens and cook stoves, this is a potential danger to environment as well as to natural resources of localities in our country. Thus, the use of green fuels is a so imperative issue.