Abstract

Cooking is a very important and essential core in every household. From cooking, people expect to preserve the food while enhancing the taste and quality of it to achieve a higher level of nourishment. Inadvertently, use of low quality biomass fuels on inefficient stoves generates pollutants creating a hostile environment during the food preparation. Often poor ventilation in a kitchen and lengthy cooking habits elevates the pollutant levels extending the risks associated with the pollutant exposure. Unfortunately, women and children accompanied with them are at the greatest risk within a family and the situation is worse among the developing nations. The gravity of the exposure to biomass smoke is reflected from the health statistics and research activities around the globe.

The main objective of this review presentation is to create awareness on health and environmental issues related to the combustion of biomass fuels. I am also intending to discuss the possible preventive measures for the exposure reduction that can be adopted easily into any household without adding any financial burdens. I sincerely hope that this review will pave the way to stimulate the curiosity among the researchers in initiating investigations to fill the existing voids in Sri Lanka in this respect. Honestly, guiding general public to minimize the exposure to obnoxious pollutants can be paid off by reducing the health care cost and enhancing the productivity. All in all, my desire is to create a healthy living environment for the people in a household that can be proudly portrayed as "home".

Cooking or Being Cooked [.pdf, 1604.4Kb]