Air pollution and impacts on women's and children's health and climate change

Cooking and eating - caring for our families at home, moving onto work, school and markets, and then back home again. These are universal rituals that fill our days and the lives of people the world over. And yet there is an unrecognized health threat lurking in the shadows of our most basic routines: air pollution. It may appear as a faint haze on the urban horizon. Or it may be visible, as black and billowing smoke pouring out of the kitchen of a poor rural home. According to the latest World Health Organization data, air pollution causes over one third of deaths and disability from strokes, lung cancer, and chronic respiratory disease - and over a quarter of heart disease. All in all, it is responsible for one in every 8 deaths worldwide. About 7 million people every year. Following the signing of the Paris Agreement, which makes a historic commitment to limit global temperature rise to "well below" 2⁰ C, we need to consider how to expedite climate actions. One of the fastest and most cost-effective ways for targeting the gradual and often imperceptible changes wrought by climate may be by tackling the visible: smog and haze over our kitchens and landscapes. Scientists know that many air pollutants are also climate change drivers. Take indoor air pollution, largely caused by the burning of coal, kerosene, wood, and dung in smoky and inefficient cookstoves, by 3 billion poor households worldwide. Around four million people die annually from such pollution, mostly w...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news