EPA’s next target in fight against climate change: cooking stoves

The war on climate change may soon be moving inside the kitchen. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy is set to unveil on Tuesday six federal grants to universities to fund research on clean cookstove technology. The announcement will put the EPA’s resources squarely behind a United Nations’ quest for cleaner burning stoves and an end to deadly cooking pollution. “This research will help to improve air quality, protect public health and slow climate change,” the EPA said in explaining why the agency chief will preside over the announcement on Tuesday. To make the case for why these grants are so important, EPA noted the World Health Organization estimates that exposure to smoke from traditional cookstoves and open pit fires leads to 4.3 million premature deaths each year. The fact is, though, most of the problem lives far from the shores of the United States, where most Americans have modern gas and electric stoves. Rather, the target of this research are the 3 billion people, mostly in the developing world, who still cook using solid fuels like wood, crop wastes, charcoal, coal and dung in open fires or leaky stoves., according to the World Heath Organization...more