Reuters, January 14, 2011
Afghan Khan Mohammad’s once-long henna-stained beard is burned up to his chin, and his face is swollen and raw after a gas lamp exploded because it was placed too close to the family’s wood-burning stove.
As temperatures drop well below freezing during the country’s harsh winter, bombs and bullets from a near-decade long war against a Taliban-led insurgency are not the only threat -just trying to light a home and stay warm can be deadly.
“We were using gas for a lamp and cooking food on the bukhari (stove), and the gas bottle was too close,” Mohammad said of the explosion, which also hurt his 11-year old son.
But aside from the threat of burns, the main problem posed by heating and cooking is the smoke, which the World Health Organization said kills 54,000 Afghans a year. Most of those killed are children younger than 5, it said.
By contrast, 2,412 civilians were killed by conflict-related violence and 3,803 wounded in the first 10 months of 2010, the United Nations said.
More than 95 per cent of Afghanistan’s 30 million people burn solid fuels, such as wood and coal, in their homes, said the WHO, making it one of the 10 countries most affected by indoor pollution.
Afghans typically use a wood-burning bukhari, a drum-shaped stove made of thin metal, or a sandali, a pit of burning coal under a table covered by a blanket, which people put their feet under.
The smoke can lead to childhood pneumonia, lung cancer, bronchitis and cardiovascular disease, while also contributing to climate change through greenhouse gas emissions.
Indoor pollution mainly affects women and children because they spend the most time at home, said Afghanistan’s acting Minister of Public Health Dr. Suraya Dalil.
“Indoor pollution is one of the areas that threatens the survival of inhabitants,” she said. “We’re working … to advocate for measures that would reduce indoor pollution, including things like provision of electricity.”
Dr. Bashir Noormal, director general of the Afghan Public Health Institute, said smoke from heating and cooking in Afghan homes “causes burns, carbon monoxide poisoning, respiratory illnesses and diseases and deaths.
“Inhalation of coal, wood and straw has been related to lung cancer and cancers of the head and neck,” he added.
Traditional cookstoves and open fires are the primary means of cooking and heating for nearly three billion people, says the UN Foundation’s Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.
Exposure to the smoke kills nearly two million people a year globally and sickens millions more, said the alliance, which is working to help produce clean cookstoves and aims to have 100 million homes using clean and efficient stoves and fuels by 2020.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/Indoor+smoke+kills+Afghans+year/4106334/story.html
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
One Earth Designs in Boston has developed a portable solar parabolic cooker, the 3-in-one Sol Source solar cooker, which has three interchangeable units: one is a stand that holds a cooking pot or tea kettle, the second unit is a ceramic device that generates an electric current when heated and can be used to charge batteries, the third unit, which addresses the problem discussed in this report is a heat storage unit. After concentrated sunlight heats the unit to several hundred degrees, it can be stored in a heat retention basket, which is then opened at night to provide several hours of safe, smoke-free heat until the family goes to bed. It was designed for Tibetan nomads who needed something portable, but heavier parabolic solar cookers could also be used by Afghans for night time heating.