Sign In
Learn bits
Index & Reports
Mahesh

01/07/22 06:25 AM IST

Cooking with ‘dirty’ fuels affects women’s mental health

In News 
  • About 2.6 billion people — nearly half of the global population, most of them in Africa, Asia and central and south America — rely on biomass fuels, like wood and charcoal, or kerosene to cook meals, heat and light their homes.
Major Highlights 
  • In high-income countries, the inability to afford clean household energy has worsened people’s mental health.
  • A recent study in the United Kingdom found that individuals who couldn’t afford to heat their homes had poorer mental health than those who could. This manifested in lower levels of life satisfaction.
  • Women whose homes did not have electricity for lighting also had 40% higher odds of being depressed than those with electric lighting.
Reasons 
  • These include a loss of productivity, fewer job opportunities, and less food security than those with access to clean energy.
  • Time is also lost because women often have to travel long distances to gather firewood.
  • Cooking with biomass fuels takes much longer than it would with clean energy sources.
Way Forward 
  • Providing clean and affordable cooking fuels.
  • Create awareness regarding the harmful effects of biomass burning, so that people will move on to alternate clean fuels.
Source- DTE 

More Related Current Affairs View All

22 Jan

Maha Kumbh: A confluence of faith and culture

'Kumbh, derived from a Sanskrit word which means a pitcher, is rotationally held every three years at the four riverside cities of Prayagraj, Haridwar, Ujjain and Nasik' The A

Read More

22 Jan

TRAI combating spams

'The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) will be using distributed ledger technology (DLT) to register spam preferences from customers.' In order to fight the deluge of

Read More

22 Jan

Status of the Smart Cities Mission

'Almost a decade has passed since the Indian government announced the concept of “smart cities” as the new lighthouses of urbanisation.' The June 2015 announcement o

Read More

India’s First Ai-Driven Magazine Generator

Generate Your Custom Current Affairs Magazine using our AI in just 3 steps