Aug 2015 HAP studies from India, DRC, Vietnam | Solar cooking | Innovation in Kenya
Dan Campbell
Below are 1 or 2 sentence excerpts of the latest posts to IAP Updates with links to the source documents.
- A Systematic Review of Innate Immunomodulatory Effects of Household Air Pollution Secondary to the Burning of Biomass Fuels
- Household air pollution exposures of pregnant women receiving advanced combustion cookstoves in India: Implications for intervention
- Cooking in the Congo: A Technical Assessment in North Kivu, DRC, 2015.
- Want to Cook Sustainably? Go Solar. National Geographic, Aug 2015.
- Fuel choice, fuel switching and improved cook stoves in Vietnamese households: Analysis, models and proposals for new solutions. 2015.
- The role of civil society organizations in low-carbon innovation in Kenya
A Systematic Review of Innate Immunomodulatory Effects of Household Air Pollution Secondary to the Burning of Biomass Fuels. Annals of Global Health, Aug 2015.
Authors: Alison Lee, MD, Patrick Kinney, ScD, Steve Chillrud, PhD, Darby Jack, PhD.
CONCLUSIONS: Household air pollution secondary to the burning of biomass fuels alters innate immunity, predisposing children to acute lower respiratory tract infections. Data from developing country biomass exposure
are scarce. Further study to define the inflammatory response, alterations in phagocytic function and upregulation of receptors important in bacterial and viral binding is needed. These studies have important
public health implications and may lead to the design of interventions to improve the health of billions of people daily.
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Household air pollution exposures of pregnant women receiving advanced combustion cookstoves in India: Implications for intervention. Annals of Global Health, Aug 2015.
Authors: Kalpana Balakrishnan, PhD, Sankar Sambandam, PhD, Santu Ghosh, MSc,Krishnendu Mukhopadhyay, PhD, Mayur Vaswani, B.E, Narendra Arora, MD, DarbyJack, PhD, Ajay Pillariseti, MPH, Michael N. Bates, PhD, Kirk R. Smith, PhD.
Conclusion – Our results do not support the widespread use of this stove in this population as a means to reliably provide health relevant reductions in HAP exposures for pregnant women, when compared to open biomass
cookstoves. The feasibility assessment identified multiple factors related to user requirements and scale of adoption within communities that affect the field efficacy of advanced combustion cookstoves as well as their potential performance in HAP intervention
studies.
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Cooking in the Congo: A Technical Assessment in North Kivu, DRC, 2015. Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC).
This report aims to provide a better understanding of the current situation of the domestic energy sector in North Kivu – with a particular focus on cooking, and how it affects the lives of communities living there. It provides an overview and analysis of the most significant energy-related interventions that have taken place (making a distinction between urban and rural/IDP-oriented) in the areas of concern. The analysis of experiences and impacts will help to identify lessons and positive practices for improved programming. Finally, this report assesses different energy resources and provides recommendations for appropriate cooking technologies in this specific context.
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Want to Cook Sustainably? Go Solar. National Geographic, Aug 2015.
Author: Victoria Sgarro
If you’ve ever been stuck in a black car on a hot day, then you understand the concept of solar cooking, says Louise Meyer, founder of Solar Household Energy, Inc. (SHE), which promotes solar cooking all over the world. Simply put, a dark surface absorbs sunlight and turns those light waves into heat energy. That’s why your car’s dark leather seats burn up in the summertime, and why we can rely on the sun for fuel. “It’s a heat trap,” Meyer explains.
Read the complete
article.
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Fuel choice, fuel switching and improved cook stoves in Vietnamese households: Analysis, models and proposals for new solutions. 2015.
Niklas Vahlne
The results from the regression and Random Forest analysis include new ways to model fuel use, enabling easy and accurate prediction. The results also provide possible alternative explanations for some previous modeling results. The modeling of stove interventions reveals large potential differences between communes, as well as a possible non-linear relationship between stove efficiencies and benefits, but also large uncertainties in estimations depending assumptions of fuel choice. Lastly, a model for a new type of ICS program that offers possibilities to overcome some of the barriers to adoption and sustained use reported by previous studies is evaluated. Combining the conclusions from the respective papers, a possibility of modeling variations in possible outcomes for stove programs, and the effects of such programs based on area descriptions, is found. However, further research is needed in order to make more robust estimations.
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The role of civil society organizations in low-carbon innovation in Kenya. Innovation and Development, Aug 2015.
Authors: Benard O. Muok and Ann Kingiri. African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS), P. O. Box 45917, 00100 Nairobi, Kenya
This paper seeks to address two basic questions: How important is the role played by civil society organizations in low-carbon innovation systems? What are the specific roles and what challenges do they face in performing these roles? The paper analyses the role of civil society through the lens of low-carbon innovation. Empirical data were generated using both structured and semi-structured questionnaires targeting innovators in a low-carbon innovation country: Kenya. The paper shows that civil society plays a crucial role in low carbon innovation in terms of learning and competence-building in Kenya. The study recommends major interventions in terms of a policy framework to recognize and institutionalize civil society as important players in innovation at the grassroots level.