Colorado State Programs & People

Breathing easier in the heart of home

Updated November 2008

Half the world's population uses open fires or primitive stoves — and the indoor air pollution causes millions of premature deaths. CSU and its partners are protecting people's health, one cleaner-burning stove at a time.

On a small plot of land surrounded by high-rise buildings in Bangalore, India, a woman in a makeshift tent is forming chapattis, or flatbread, and browning them on a frying pan placed over an open fire. Most of the smoke is trapped inside the tent, creating an environment similar to the inside of a chimney.

I lean my head inside the tent, and my eyes immediately burn. I can taste the smoke, as thick as it is, but the woman continues cooking as she's done most of her life, squinting in the haze and heat. It's almost sundown, and families need to be fed. The woman's home, one of about eight on this plot, is made of scavenged tarp and plastic, and similar kitchen chores are taking place in other tents while, out in the open, children scribble school lessons in notebooks.

Cleaning up the kitchen

Whether in tents or other housing, more than half the world's population cook in their homes over a fire or primitive stove, burning wood, crop waste, animal dung, coconut shells, or other biomass, says the World Health Organization. Fumes and smoke generated by the stoves cause more than 1½ million premature deaths in developing countries each year — and that's why I'm in Bangalore, 9,000 miles from home, with a Colorado State film crew and two graduate student engineers. We're here to see how a technology project is helping to ease severe health problems caused by the simple act of cooking food.

In fact, the tent we visited is just a five-minute walk from the headquarters of Envirofit India, a branch of Envirofit International, a Fort Collins-based nonprofit corporation that had its inception at Colorado State's Engines and Energy Conversion Lab, or EECL. Envirofit India is dedicated to selling and distributing Envirofit’s clean-burning stoves in this country of more than a billion people.

One wall of the headquarters displays about 15 stoves, and after we greet her, Martha Kohlhagen, director of sales and product management, turns her attention to two local men who stopped by to check out the stoves they'd heard about.

"The stoves are designed to concentrate heat on the pots and not send that energy all over the room," she says. "Efficient air flow means wood burns hotter, there's 80 percent less smoke and emissions that harm your family's health, and cooking time is reduced by almost half. Saves money, too, because you use only about half the fuel of traditional stoves."

A healthy beginning

Harish Anchan, general manager for Envirofit's Indian Operations, comes in and announces that two dozen stoves have been sold this day alone. That's good news, but it's just the beginning indicators of Envirofit's ambitious sales projections.

In September 2007, UK-registered Shell Foundation spun off its indoor air pollution-reduction project, "Breathing Space," to be scaled up and commercialized by Envirofit International. Since then, Envirofit has worked with its research and development partners at the EECL to develop and test low-cost, clean-burning stoves. And because indoor air pollution is rated the 4th worst global killer by the WHO, the potential to help clean up that air is staggering: Envirofit International aims to sell 10 million stoves in five countries over the next five years.

"The difference between traditional and Envirofit stoves is like comparing wagons to rockets," says Harish, who remembers tears running down his cheeks from the stinging wood smoke in his childhood home.

Burning for research

Martha and Harish leave to attend to business — it's expanding exponentially, and requires a great deal of organization — and that frees up the two CSU students to continue setting up a stove emissions testing lab in the back of the headquarters. Christian L'Orange, mechanical engineering graduate student, and Melanie Sloan, graduate research assistant, hammer, bolt, duct-tape and otherwise rig vents, hoods, and other paraphernalia. Eventually, the lab will be used to measure particulate concentrations and other elements of test stoves.

"This isn't just a shiny stove, it's a serious piece of equipment," says Christian, who's been involved in the project for more than two years at the EECL. "But I do get to set things on fire," he adds with a grin.

Melanie, who like Christian is visiting India and seeing the stoves in action for the first time, says she was an economic analyst for a major corporation before deciding to pursue a different, more satisfying career.

"I started researching schools and found projects at the EECL that really caught my interest," she says. She met with Bryan Willson, the lab's director, and that cemented her new direction. "I wasn't necessarily interested in cookstoves, but the idea of applying technical solutions to the real world brought me here (to CSU). This trip to India has been a real eye-opener. It's so satisfying to see these stoves being used where they're needed." Melanie is the fuels specialist on the project and works beside Christian, burning things in the name of research.

Heart of the home

Early on a humid Monday morning, our crew jams into a mid-size car and careens off to visit the village of Goolihosahalli northwest of Bangalore. Four numbing hours later, we step into the dusty street of the village and immediately draw the attention of what seems like most of the 500 residents. The temperature is searing, above 90 degrees. Oxen, roosters, and laughing children mingle in the deeply rutted streets, surrounding us in a fever of color and animal musk.

We make our way to a home where a grandmother is cooking. We ask permission to join her in the kitchen, then remove our shoes and step carefully into the heart of the home. On the hard-packed dirt floor is a black Envirofit B-1100, an elegant, one-pot stove. The grandmother is happy to show off her stove to strangers, and tells us, with little prompting, how pleased she is with it. In fact, my eyes aren’t stinging like they had been in the smoky tent.

All around us, beyond the stone and mud walls of the kitchen, the richness and poverty and grace of India simmers in untold centuries of habitation. But I can't take my eyes off the flames of the stove, and stare at the fire, the only way millions of people are able to make daily meals.

The grandmother reaches for a small stick, pushes it gingerly into the flames. She tends a pot of water on the stove, waiting patiently for it to boil so she can make tea, liberally sweetened, for her guests.

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This article by Paul Miller originally appeared in the Winter 2008-09 issue of  Colorado State Magazine.

To request a free copy of Colorado State Magazine's Winter 2008-09 issue, which includes this India story and other features, send e-mail to paul.g.miller@colostate.edu or call (970) 491-2658.