By Environment Correspondent Alister Doyle OSLO (Reuters) - (Release at 2301 GMT, Sunday Nov 3) Simple measures to reduce pollution from cooking stoves in developing nations could save a million lives a year and help slow global warming, a World Bank study showed on Monday. The study called for tough limits on pollution from methane and soot, which can settle on snow and ice and hasten a thaw by darkening the surface, in everything from cooking and heating to mining and flaring by the oil and gas industry. "The damage from indoor cooking smoke alone is horrendous - every year, four million people die from exposure to the smoke," World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in a statement of the study "on Thin Ice: How Cutting Pollution can Slow Warming and Save Lives." Many people in developing nations cook on open fires with wood or coal, exposing people - mainly women and children - to fumes that cause everything from respiratory problems to heart disease. "If more clean cook-stoves - stoves that use less or cleaner fuel - would be used it could save one million lives," the report said of the annual benefits.
via Health News Headlines - Yahoo! News http://news.yahoo.com/world-bank-urges-better-cookstoves-developing-states-curb-230448486.html
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