Exhaustive research exists about the health affects of pollution from the coal industry, but less widely known is the extent to which electricity-deprived families - and women in particular - are being slowly poisoned by kerosene lamps and inefficient cookstoves.
Many of the nearly two billion people without access to electricity across the globe depend on kerosene lamps for lighting, and in the process risk fire and breathe in the equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes per day.
A number of NGOs have come up with innovative technologies and financing systems that could rapidly change these numbers by using pay-as-you-go renewable energy schemes and promoting local small-scale solar businesses. The resulting products create new jobs, and end up costing less than the deadly kerosene.
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