India has some of the worst air quality in the world right now. What's one of the major sources of this air pollution? Indoor cooking that creates smoke. But this is a solvable problem.
Sign on to demand Indian leaders make it easier for people there to switch to smoke-free cooking alternatives.
Studies show that making the switch to smoke-free options is most likely to happen when leaders in the community make the switch themselves and the alternatives are made cheap and accessible. Right now, the World Health Organization (WHO) says that 3 billion people cook indoors with toxic smoke pollution and that 4 million people die prematurely because of it.
We are talking about families with children at home that need their lungs protected. In fact, the rate of toxic smoke in a home with this way of cooking is 50-100 times the level deemed safe to breathe by WHO. But beyond the individual health risks of these cooking practices, there are huge environmental impacts. The main cooking method in India, specifically, emits black carbon, which is one of the principle emissions responsible for melting glaciers and blocking sunlight from reaching Earth.
Essentially, the health costs to both regular people and our world at large are just too high not to make a change. That's why we need to push leaders in India to model this shift and make new cooking methods easily available and affordable.
Please sign on to help.
