The WHO estimates that indoor air pollution cause 1.6 million deaths per year in developing countries around the world, up to 555,000 of which occur in India alone - and overwhelmingly it's the poor who are dying. Villagers have no choice but to use wood, coal or dung fires, raising the risk that young children will be killed by carbon-monoxide poisoning or a bad case of pneumonia ravaging weakened lungs. Likewise, the women who typically keep their home fires burning are vulnerable to chronic respiratory diseases. Day in and day out for 50 years, some of these women might be cooking six hours a day, exposed to pollutions, says Rehfuess.
Curtailing indoor air pollution can be as simple as replacing open wood fires with better-ventilated cookstoves, but more sophisticated stoves can cost up to $120. China and India , home to the world's largest rural populations, have launched ambitious national programs in recent decades to supply villagers with safer stoves at subsidized prices. But the programs have not always worked, in India, for example, some 33 million stoves were given out free to villagers in rural areas from 1984 to 2000 but because of a lack of health education or follow-up maintenance, most families abandoned the cookstoves for their old fires within a few years.
That's left nongovernmental organizations like the shell Foundation to step into the gap. It has begun a pilot program with local Indian NGOs in a pair of rural states to develop and market clean, wood-burning stoves that cost just $5-$10 yet can reduce emissions by up to 40%. The project is on track to sell 1000,000 stoves by the end of 2005, and the groups plan to expand the program nationally in the future. Program manager Karen Westley says Shell and its partner NGOs made an effort to sell their customers not just more efficient tools but also the idea that different is better. You have to make sure people actually want that damn thing, says Westely. They need to make the connection between having a better stove, breathing less smoke and experiencing better health in the end.
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