-The Guardian World Bank report calls for action to cut common pollutants such as soot, which could save millions of lives every year Cleaner cookstoves could save a million lives every year, but costs need to decrease sharply for poor households in developing countries to be able to afford them, according to a World Bank report. On thin ice: how cutting pollution can slow warming and save lives, published on Sunday evening, calls...

-The Hindu The International Agency for Research on Cancer, a specialised arm of the World Health Organisation, has sounded an alert for policymakers with its conclusion that there is sufficient evidence now on outdoor air pollution as a cause of lung cancer. A separate evaluation of particulate matter in the air has led to its classification also as a ‘Group 1' pollutant, indicating firm evidence of cancer-causing properties. Given that rapidly...

-PTI KOLKATA: A lamp which produces high quality light and doubles up as a device to cook food without causing pollution has been invented by a team of engineers in Maharashtra. Suitable particularly for rural households which lack clean cooking fuel and electricity, the device, aptly named Lanstove (lantern combined with cook stove), has been developed by researchers from Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) in Maharashtra's Phaltan. IIT graduate Anil Rajvanshi, who led...

-The Hindu Biomass cookstoves and solar lighting improve the health of women and are creating business models that empower them Around the world three billion people have no access to modern cooking fuels. They depend mostly on direct burning of solid biomass for cooking and heating. The smoke from these rudimentary stoves causes some four million deaths annually, destroys millions of tonnes of crops and leads to global warming and large-scale regional...

-The Hindu There has to be a national mission to ensure that rural homes have access to clean cooking fuel and stoves instead of the killer chulhas that are claiming the lives of large numbers of women A large section of our country's population, nearly 75 per cent of rural and 22 per cent of urban households, still uses biomass for daily cooking. An estimated 80 per cent of the residential energy...