The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded University of California at Berkeley a $1.5 million grant for a pollution study, according to the EPA. The study will assess the impact of pollution from household and village-scale unventilated stoves on air quality in developing countries such as India, EPA officials announced Wednesday.
The grant is part of $9 million awarded nationally to six universities to research cleaner technologies and fuels for cooking and for lighting and heating homes.
"More than three billion people worldwide rely on burning fuels such as wood, plant matter, and animal waste for domestic cooking," Jared Blumenfeld, EPA's regional administrator for the Pacific Southwest, said in a statement. "The soot produced by these unventilated stoves is thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide in terms of global warming," Blumenfeld said.
Air emissions from unventilated stoves lead to an estimated 4 million deaths per year worldwide, according to the EPA.
—By Bay City News
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