I built a solar oven that hits over 400 dF. I'd love to show you how to build them.

I think we can share the efforts of reducing HAP caused by open fire stoves. At Bataan Peninsula State University we developed a stove that burns fuel inside a closed chamber, releases smoke outside the kitchen via an extendable chimney, vertically fed requiring lesser attendance of the user safe to use, less fuel consumption, easy to fabricate and simple design. If you think this piece of work will help, let us know... we are very much eager to share the design of the cookstove to ease the burden of the people in biomass dependent households anywhere else.

Thank you for your article highlighting the good work of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. However, you did not mention the potential benefit of the new cookstoves in reducing burn injuries. Severe burn injuries remain a hidden health crisis in developing countries, particularly among poor women and children. In developing countries, 7 million people each year suffer severe burns, many causing permanent disabilities or death. As you may know, more women worldwide are severely burned each year than are diagnosed with HIV and TB combined, according to WHO statistics. In South Asia, three times more children and young people die of burns than from malaria. It is a silent emergency, but solutions exist. Burns are a solvable global health crisis. Burns can easily prevented, through new technologies like cookstoves and other measures, and can be treated through surgery that corrects disabling injuries and saves countless lives. We are hopeful that the new cookstoves will prevent some of the 7 million annual burn injuries in developing countries. To learn more, www.resurge.org/burns.

Thanks for spot lighting this important issue. There is an alternative to rocket-stoves in the clean stove world. It is the TLUD or pyrolytic stoves. These stoves can be built inexpensively, are natural draft, burn significantly cleaner than an open fire, have improved fuel efficiency and can use a huge range of dry organic material as fuel. What is truly exciting about this relatively new approach is that this stove offers it's own incentive and monitoring functions. These stoves create high quality charcoal (biochar) as a co-product of the clean heat produced. This charcoal has a monetary value as fuel, as filtration medium and most importantly as a carbon negative soil amendment. I am running a pilot project in rural Costa Rica with great results, (Proyecto Estufa Finca) using this concept. Check it out at www.seachar.org

This article does a good job on the health side of stoves; we need more such articles. But it totally misses the fact that hundreds of small groups (thousands of people) are working on stoves that are char-making. When that char is placed in soil, more than three times as much carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. What's more, the productivity of the soil is also usually improved. Similar man-made sol in Brazil (called terra preta) is, after up to thousands of years later, producing at double and triple the non-modified soil nearby. Besides the climate and soil impacts, these char-making stoves are proving to have the lowest pollution levels, require much less tending, are more efficient, and can earn money for the users (sometimes from carbon credits, almost always from improved food production). The main downside is that they can only operate in a batch mode. Although often (not always) more expensive, this doesn't matter if they can (and they do) have a quick payback. I hope the Smithsonian will return to the stove topic and then report the latest results worldwide on the even cleaner and climate-friendly char-making stoves. Ron

A group that has worked for many years in providing improved cooking and heating in Central America is known as Masons On A Mission. Masons on a Mission works with Emily Webb of the Calacyria Foundation, an American non profit, to fund and build vented cookstoves in villages around Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. They also work with Clara Colop of Ixtel, an indiginous a non profit org working to provide health care for women in the western highlands of Guatemala. Every year in late Jan or early Feb, roughly 25-30 volunteers arrive in San Marcos la laguna to build stoves for a week. They work with Emily Webb of Calacyria, who arranges for the materials, and works with women leaders in the communities where we will build stoves for the week. After returning home, as money is raised, it is wired down to Emily & Clara who buy and arrange delivery for the materials. They also provide the local masons, who we know and have worked with for years, that will build those stoves. The vast majority of stoves that MOM has provided, are built by our Maya masons.

Two years ago, my Rotary Club met a young man, originally from Ethiopia, who is solving this problem. Please go to Yusuf Tura at YouTube and listen to him talk about his life and dreams of helping others. Also go to www.greenenergywithoutborders.com. He has started to empower Ethiopian villagers with a viable answer to the pressing issue of safe, clean cookstoves. Using scrap metal, they make a stove which burns briquettes made from waste materials such as stalks and leaves from plants. The stoves are sold for $10.00 with briquettes at $ .25each. The pollution is minimal and best of all, the people are empowered to make and sell the items they have made. It has cut down on the need to seek almost non-existent wood, thereby freeing women and children from the many hours search, has cut down not only pollution but the burns they sustained. The children are now able to attend school, too. He has come from a humble shepherd life to being a refugee in Kenya, and now a citizen here. The business is non-profit, and he is an honorary member of our Lake Forest Park, WA Rotary Club, District 5030.

In these sunbaked areas, why not simple metal/foil solar reflectors for cooking?

Another way to address this problem is to use pressure cookers. If people are using leaky or open saucepans, they are wasting energy and exposing themselves unnecessarily to fumes no matter how efficient the stove. In my new (2012) book 'Cooking and Experimenting with Pressure Cookers', I show how to use a pressure cooker much more efficiently than they are currently used. For example, I bring the food to full pressure and temperature (250F) and turn the burner off. In 15 min, the food cooks beautifully via stored heat. This passive cooking method works for split peas, soaked beans, and white rice. For foods that require a longer cook time, I use a modified method, which again saves energy. My website at www.atlasbook.com/pressurecooking/index.html has a free article on cooking split peas. It describes the method in detail. My book goes into even more detail. Moreover, it has the proof to back up my energy-efficient methods.

Thank you so much for this informative and insightful piece, Ingfei Chen. I think few people realize that in many parts of the world, the simple act of cooking carries so many dangers. World Health Organization data show indoor air pollution kills two million people every year and injures even more: Indoor air pollution is the fourth biggest health risk in developing countries. OPIC recently wrote about the problem and its work with the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. I think you’ll find the blog post interesting. http://www.opic.gov/blog/microfinance/its-as-simple-as-a-stove