In the summer of 2020, as smoke closed in on our offices in Portland and Eugene, Oregon, we sat down with Dr. Nordica MacCarty from Oregon State University to discuss the planet's current situation, and the role that cookstoves play.
What are you experiencing in Corvallis and how is it affecting operations at Oregon State University?
Here in Corvallis, the air quality index (AQI) was over 300 for many days in a row. When the smoke first arrived, OSU completely shut down campus. I wasn't even allowed to gather supplies from my office. Campus finally opened 9 days later when the AQI dropped below 200, but employees are still encouraged to stay home if they are able. The first day of school for both of my children was also cancelled in the early days of the smoke.
In the 20 years I have lived in the Willamette Valley I have never experienced business or school closure due to wildfire smoke, until now.
This summer, more than one million acres of land have burned in Oregon alone.
Your program studies air quality and its effects on health. What are the dangers of the wildfire smoke we’re experiencing here in Oregon?
Exposure to smoke in this concentration is extremely harmful to health. The dose-response curve of this particulate pollution is log-linear meaning that small even increases in exposure lead to large impacts on health. Our air quality has been off the charts, beyond hazardous, for almost a week. These are exposure levels are not well understood since they are so rare and so far beyond the World Health Organization's guideline of 25 micrograms per cubic meter. We know that even much lower concentrations, corresponding to an AQI of 50 or greater, are harmful to health.
The pollutant that is of most concern is fine particulate matter, or PM2.5. These smoke particles can penetrate deep into the lungs, and contribute to asthma, lung disease, pneumonia, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder in the long term. In the short term many people also experience eye, nose, throat and lung irritation, coughing, sneezing, runny nose and shortness of breath. People with heart or lung disease, older adults, children, and people of lower socioeconomic status are the groups most at risk of PM2.5 exposure.
Exposure to smoke in this concentration is extremely harmful to health.
Because of these dangers of exposure at these concentrations, my husband and I have been keeping ourselves, our children, and even our dog inside with a box fan running with a furnace filter to clean the air for going on 9 days now.
What role does climate change play in natural disasters like the wildfires we’re experiencing here in the Northwest?
I am not a climate scientist but I have lived in Oregon for two decades and have been observing the effects of climate change firsthand. The forests are tinder dry by August. Stands of fir and pine are dying all over the state, including in my neighborhood. Many people have stopped planning camping trips in the mountains in late August, knowing the high likelihood that fires will disrupt their plans and put their health and lives at risk. It was not this way even 10 years ago.
Photo by Marcus Kauffman
It was not this way even 10 years ago.
How is this smoke similar to the smoke inside the homes of families cooking over open fires?
Every time I have opened the door briefly to go get the mail or turn on the water for the garden this week, the olfactory memory of traveling in the rural developing world strikes me.
This is exactly how the air smells and feels on a daily basis in so many countries I've visited -- India, Guatemala, Peru, Uganda and so many more.
That smoke from cooking not only creates hazardous levels of pollution inside the kitchens where women and children are gathered to cook, but it disperses throughout the neighborhood and creates a constant cloud of unhealthy air for everyone. Chronic exposure at these levels leads to damaging health effects, and is’s the 2nd leading cause of death for women globally.
How does open-fire cooking contribute to climate change?
Open-fire cooking in a single home emits at least several tons of carbon each year, and even more if the fuel harvest is unsustainable as it is in many regions where deforestation and desertification are occurring. This carbon is made up of not only carbon dioxide, but also products of incomplete combustion including carbon monoxide, methane, and especially black carbon, which are 2-680 times stronger than the same mass of carbon dioxide.
These dark soot and smoke particles have an extremely strong effect on the climate. When they travel up into the atmosphere, they darken it, leading to greater absorption of solar radiation. Then when the particles wash out onto snow or glaciers, they darken those surfaces as well and accelerate melting even further.
So household cooking has been estimated by some to contribute to as much as 8% of global anthropogenic climate change. I'm always careful to point out that we certainly shouldn't be blaming these 2.7 billion people who are cooking with solid fuels for causing climate change, since the vast majority of the emissions come from industrialized countries. But the sad reality is that it is these vulnerable communities who suffer the most from the effects of climate change when they are not able to easily adapt to the extreme weather and droughts that are the inevitable result of our warming atmosphere.
Communities suffer the most from the effects of climate change when they are not able to adapt to the extreme weather and droughts that are the inevitable result of our warming atmosphere.
What role can improved cookstoves play in the fight against climate change?
Improved cookstoves that reduce fuel use and increase combustion efficiency can reduce climate-changing emissions from cooking significantly.
Cookstoves that are well-engineered for efficient performance and developed hand-in-hand with cooks to ensure they will be adopted and used frequently can play an important role in slowing our contributions to a rapidly changing climate.
Dr. Nordica MacCarty is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Oregon State University where she is an active contributor to the growing humanitarian engineering program.
StoveTeam would like to thank Dr. MacCarty for her time and expertise.
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