The Critical Importance of Cleaner Fuels | Source: S Patel and S Mehta, Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, Aug 2014.
Preliminary exposure results from Alliance-supported child survival research studies in Ghana, Nigeria, and Nepal were unveiled at a special symposium held in Seattle at the annual meeting of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE), the premier technical conference for environmental health researchers. Results indicate substantial reductions in exposure associated with the adoption of cleaner cookstoves and fuels. Moreover, researchers reported high rates of study compliance, and solid evidence that study participants were actively using the intervention stoves. There were also discussions on the implication of these results for achieving the World Health Organizations (WHO) indoor air quality guidelines for household fuel combustion, with a special emphasis on estimating the impact of ‘stove stacking’, or continued use of traditional cookstoves, on the ability to meet air quality guidelines.
These study results will have far reaching implications for Alliance focus countries such as Ghana, Kenya, China, and India, where policy makers and health professionals are well-positioned to increase awareness of the links between household air pollution, fuel switching, and health. For example, given Ghana’s commitment to scaling adoption of clean cookstoves, and providing 50% of the population with access to clean fuels by 2020, the study will provide policy-relevant information for Ghana and the broader global public health community.
