Dr. Lowman’s latest Nature’s Secrets column in newsobserver.com:
For a typical mom in rural India, breakfast does not involve take-away Starbucks, micro-waved oatmeal, frozen waffles or sparkling tableware extracted from an automatic dishwasher. Instead, it usually consists of leaning over a wood-burning stove for many hours, inhaling particulates while cooking for her family. This scenario exists for millions of moms in India, China, South America, Indonesia and Africa. While traditional cooking has a fairly small energy footprint compared to Western cooking, it also emits black carbon – otherwise known as soot.
Soot results from the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels or biomass. Common sources of soot are wildfires, diesel engines, wood stoves and agricultural burn-off.
When soot plumes settle on surfaces, the dark particles absorb heat and accelerate warming. The good news is that soot disintegrates from the atmosphere after only a few days or weeks; the bad news is that soot is on the increase.
