WORLDWIDE some 2.4 billion people cook on traditional stoves that burn wood, crop residues or dung, and each year the fumes from such stoves kill 1.6 million people (Â鶹´«Ã½, 6 December 2003, p 22). According to estimates by the UN Development Programme, anyone regularly cooking on these stoves ends up inhaling as large a quantity of toxic chemicals as if they smoked two packets of cigarettes a day.
Gareth Thomas, the minister at the Department for International Development (DFID), tells me that his department is well aware of the problem of smoke inhalation. It set out its plans…
