18 April 2016
Smoke exits where fires exit and it cause environment pollution. As remarked by Jim Jetter, an engineer having worked for over a decade to create cleaner cookstoves, indoor air pollution causes many millions of death each year, even more than those from AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. Jim Jetter is now working at the Laboratory of the US Environment Protection Agency which is specialized in testing new designs of cookstoves from all over the world.
Daily cooking creates major health risks to billions of people around the world. A global effort has been investing millions of USD into creation of better cookstoves. Companies have been meeting the investments with new designs. The question, however, is how much they are better? Scientists of the US Environment Protection Agency are researching and will work out it.
Jim Jetter, having been working for a pilot project since 2010 to find cookstoves of less environment pollution, said that his laboratory has collected many more cookstoves since the US Secretary of State – Ms. Hillary Clinton – helped to activate the movements of the Global Alliances for Clean Cookstoves. This is a challenge to health and environment, but this is also an economic opportunity in case of proper approaches. Companies creating more efficient and less pollutant cookstoves have been supported by the Alliance. The designs cover all kinds of shapes and sizes. Of which, there are industrial cookstoves, big enough to cook foods for a school or a hospital. All of these cookstoves are for cooking cleaner and more efficient than normal simple cookstoves.
But how buyers can be sure that those better cookstoves will use less fuels or less pollute? Jetter’s laboratory would work out the question by high-tech analyses with modern measuring equipment. Researchers implement accurate measurements to pollutants like nitrogen oxides, black carbons or soot. They will check how long and how much energy is needed to boil a water pot. Buyers will be able to compare the new cookstoves’ performance upon what they consider to be important. For example, in case of outdoor cooking, indoor air waste is not a considerable issue but less use of fuels is very important due to current shortage of fuels.
N.T.T (source: Xinhua, 28/2/2016)