How Cooking Kills You

The word ‘firewood’ refers to the exact same thing in America and in Nigeria. But its purpose in these two countries are completely different. In the States, firewood is often used related to cooking, only in bonfires for making ‘smores. It is something that is done for entertainment and enjoyment. In poorer areas of Nigeria, firewood is the main method used to cook food. The next “step up” is a Kerosene stove, which is what my family used while we lived in Nigeria.

Firewood is used because it is cheaper than kerosene, and requires little fuel-the kerosene stove consumes kerosene in alarming amounts. We often reverted back to firewood in the regular petroleum and kerosene shortages that are common in Nigeria. However, both methods are not exactly healthy. Both, especially the firewood fire, release copious amounts of smoke and sooth into the atmosphere and the cooks system. Firewood cooking is often operated outdoors while kerosene stoves are operated indoors. This often results in their negative effects on the cook being about equal. The firewood releases more smoke, but into the atmosphere as well as the cook. While the kerosene stove releases less smoke, it often spreads around the house, and all its inhabitants.

So here is an amazing conundrum: you want to ensure that people are given the basic resources to make food, but there is the other fact that the process of cooking itself is actually harmful to health.

Living in Nigeria, the concept of firewood and kerosene stoves were commonplace ideas to me, and I never questioned them. Gas and electric cookers were luxuries only the rich could afford, the average man cooked with kerosene or firewood. Then, as I was doing more research into the MDGs, I found a troubling statistic: “Every year an estimated 2 million women and the babies strapped to their backs or the children that sit by them as the cook, die from inhaling the toxic smoke…[about] one death every 16 seconds”. And in reading that one sentence, I was in shock. I and my mother (a nurse) had never once considered the negative effects of the smoke. It was common to say “Don’t stand over the fire and breath in the smoke”, but I never considered that just standing around the stove area would cause that many deaths.

The WHO estimates stove smoke to be the fourth-worst health risk in developing countries, something I never knew or considered to be a problem. After all, gas stoves had their drawbacks (rare stories of gas stove explosions) and electric stoves were useless in a country without stable electricity (except for the rich who could afford 24-hour standby generators). For me, a kerosene stove was the best option, and I never considered it to be dangerous. I did not know that it led to things like low birth weight and lung cancer.

The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton brought this statistic to notice during the MDG meetings regarding maternal and child health. The U.S. has now committed about 50 million dollars towards new tools to reduce dependence on such fuels as wood and kerosene, and reduce costs for cleaner and more efficient fuels and appliances.

I wrote previously about redefining the idea of “Healthy” not just based on the country, but as a dynamic term that changes as time goes on. Now I have to add that we must also consider what we decide is commonplace and look for its negative effects. And when these effects are found, recognize them. The Nigerian government never had any public service announcements regarding cooking smoke and air pollution, and I was never taught anything about it in school except to avoid breathing in fumes from open stoves and bad cars. Informing the population of the hidden dangers is a major step that will have immense effects, if people are told of the negative effects. Ignorance might be bliss, but with the negative effects, ignorance is a luxury that cannot be granted.

I suppose that now the commonplace and ‘normal’ is no longer so. And I have to reconsider what I thought to be acceptable and un-harmful and really look at what hidden dangers people live with.

**I am a Nigerian and have only lived in Nigeria and America, as a result, the scenarios I describe are common in Nigeria alone as I do not know what the norm is in other countries.**

-Onome U. Chicago IL, International Health Team, College Sophomore.

References:

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/345279,asia-africa-feature.html