Lauren’s paper on Indian cookstoves

Lauren published a scientific paper in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics on emissions of pollutants from Indian cookstoves. An estimated 3 billion people worldwide burn solid fuels (charcoal, wood, agricultural residues) to cook. These inefficient cookstoves give off a lot of smoke. Over time, inhaling smoke leads to adverse health effects such as asthma, cancers, COPD, and low birth weights for infants exposed in the womb. Lauren and her team showed that benzene emissions were raised when using the chulha cookstove, the one predominately used for cooking household meals in the village where she measured. This is important because benzene is a known human carcinogen, or known to cause cancer. This is the most comprehensive study of cookstove smoke to date!