Despite
efforts for change, Bangladeshi women prefer to use pollution-causing
cookstoves
June 29,
2012
Women in
rural Bangladesh prefer inexpensive, traditional stoves for cooking over modern
ones — despite significant health risks, according to a Yale study in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A large
majority of respondents (94%) believed that indoor smoke from the traditional
stoves is harmful. Still, Bangladeshi women opted for traditional cookstove
technology so they could afford basic needs.
“Non-traditional
cookstoves might be more successful if they were designed with features valued
more highly by users, such as reducing operating costs even if they might not
reduce environmental impact,” said Mushfiq Mobarak, a co-author and associate professor
of economics at the Yale School of Management.
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