An expert survey on the material types used to start cookstoves☆
Section snippets
Introduction/background
Approximately 2.8 billion people – around 40% of the world's population – use solid fuel as their primary source of domestic energy (Bonjour et al. 2013). Solid fuels are often burned in inefficient and poorly ventilated cookstove systems (Bonjour et al. 2013). Cookstove emissions contribute to indoor and outdoor air pollution that impacts human health and the environment (GBD 2016 Risk Factors Collaborators 2017; IPCC 2014). However, the estimated health and environmental impacts of cookstove
Survey development and content
The online survey was developed using an iterative process of question design, review, and testing. Five individuals currently involved in cookstove research tested the survey to provide feedback on content and clarity; these individuals were not included as respondents in the final survey. The survey was determined to be exempt from the requirements of the human subjects research protections by the Colorado State University Institutional Review Board.
Respondents were asked to identify up to
Respondent characteristics, experience levels, and locations
We directly contacted 41 individuals to participate in the survey. Several contacted individuals forwarded the recruitment message to colleagues; one individual posted the message to a cookstoves email listserv. As such, it is difficult to know how many total individuals saw the call to participate, but we estimated it to be 45–60. We received completed survey responses from 23 individuals. Twelve of the respondents (52%) were employed in private research/design, seven (30%) were in academia
Discussion and conclusions
Nearly 40% of the world's population currently cooks over open fires or rudimentary cookstoves, which is a large source of air pollution with local, regional, and global implications. Documenting the range of cooking practices that occur around the world is important in order to design behavioral change interventions that reduce emissions. Almost no published documentation exists regarding stove startup practices. Indeed, the majority of the cookstove experts interviewed for this research
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Cited by (5)
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2022, Environmental ResearchCitation Excerpt :Reasons for this may be reflected in the frequency and use of stoves. For example, if participants used the stove more frequently for shorter time periods, these results may have been influenced by frequency of starting the stove, the largest exposure occurring at “startup” when the stoves were ignited (Fedak et al., 2019). Lastly, the chosen temperature threshold may not fully capture all cooking events across all households.
Climate and sustainability co-governance in Kenya: A multi-criteria analysis of stakeholders' perceptions and consensus
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2022, Air Quality, Atmosphere and HealthExperimental and Computational Analysis of Household Cook Stoves: A Review
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Funding: This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [grant number R01ES023688].