Study indicates that the number of victims from the “silent killer in the kitchen” is double that of previous estimates.
Indoor air pollution kills more than diarrhea, malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV… combined.
Until recently, it was widely accepted that an estimated two million people died worldwide from exposure to the toxic indoor air that results from the inefficient indoor combustion of wood and charcoal from cooking and heating.
The victims are largely women and children since they are the ones most likely to be exposed to the “silent killer in the kitchen,” that is, the noxious fumes and smoke that emanate from traditional cookstoves used in the homes of the poorest people on the planet, which amounts to about half of the world population.
But a study published last year indicates the numbers of people killed by indoor air pollution from inefficient cookstove combustion is actually twice as high as previously estimated.
The Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 (GBD 2010), published On December 13, 2012, in the journal Lancet, is the largest ever systematic effort to describe the global distribution and causes of a wide array of major diseases, injuries, and health risk factors. GBD 2010 consists of seven articles, each containing data on different aspects of the study (including data for different countries and world regions, men and women, and different age groups).
This story came to our attention from an announcement released by the EPA’s Clean Indoor Air and Cookstove announcement.
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