Source · product
Cookstoves
Also: cookstove, cooking stove, traditional stove, three-stone fire, biomass stove
The appliance in which household cooking fuel is burned, from a three-stone open fire to a manufactured stove with a chimney. In exposure research the stove, not the fuel, is often the thing that changes — and it is the stove that decides how completely the fuel burns.
Where it comes from indoors
Fuel and appliance are separate variables and the appliance is usually the stronger one. The same firewood burned on an open fire, in an enclosed stove with a controlled air inlet, and in a stove with a chimney gives three different kitchens, because what determines the emission is the temperature of the fire, the air reaching it and where the products go.
Three features are worth recording for any stove in a study. Whether combustion air is controlled, which decides how complete the burn is. Whether there is a flue, which decides how much of the product leaves the room rather than the fire. And where the stove stands — a kitchen separated from the sleeping rooms produces a different exposure from a stove in the single room a family lives in.
Households rarely own one stove. Stacking — keeping the old fire for some tasks — is the normal case, not the exception.
What the studies report
| Linked to | Effect | Population | Study design | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carbon monoxide (CO) | mean 19 | primary cooks · personal exposure of the primary cook in the household | quasi-experimental evaluation of two improved cookstove programmes in Lusaka, Zambia: 24-hour personal exposure to carbon monoxide (747 measurements) and PM2.5 (90) of primary cooks at baseline in the cool season of 2019 and at endline in the warm season, with difference-in-differences and generalised least squares models of log-transformed exposure against stove group, season, neighbourhood, cooking location, ventilation, stove-influenced hours and expenditure | F-0711 Impacts of Improved Cookstove Interventions on Personal Expo… (2025) | machine |
| Carbon monoxide (CO) | difference 4.3 (1.1–7.4) per peak carbon monoxide, a two-hour moving average above 4.1 ppm (the 90th percentile of the distribution), against all other exposure mmHg | pregnant women · personal exposure of the pregnant woman in the household | sub-study of a randomised cookstove trial in rural Ghana: 24-hour ambulatory blood-pressure monitoring in pregnant women with concurrent personal carbon-monoxide monitoring, analysed by multilevel linear regression with a random intercept for each monitoring session and adjustment for awake hours and the peri-waking period | F-0728 Quinn Ambulatory monitoring demonstrates an acute association betw… (2017) | machine |
| Carbon monoxide (CO) | difference 4.5 (1.9–7.2) per peak carbon monoxide, a two-hour moving average above 4.1 ppm (the 90th percentile of the distribution), against all other exposure mmHg | pregnant women · personal exposure of the pregnant woman in the household | sub-study of a randomised cookstove trial in rural Ghana: 24-hour ambulatory blood-pressure monitoring in pregnant women with concurrent personal carbon-monoxide monitoring, analysed by multilevel linear regression with a random intercept for each monitoring session and adjustment for awake hours and the peri-waking period | F-0729 Quinn Ambulatory monitoring demonstrates an acute association betw… (2017) | machine |
| Carbon monoxide (CO) | sibling rows carry the two intervention groups | pregnant women · personal exposure of the pregnant woman in the household | sub-study of a randomised cookstove trial in rural Ghana: 24-hour ambulatory blood-pressure monitoring in pregnant women with concurrent personal carbon-monoxide monitoring, analysed by multilevel linear regression with a random intercept for each monitoring session and adjustment for awake hours and the peri-waking period | F-0730 Quinn Ambulatory monitoring demonstrates an acute association betw… (2017) | machine |
| Carbon dioxide (CO₂) | median 847 | households cooking at home · kitchen | cross-sectional household survey of 280 randomly selected households in Jimma town, Ethiopia (140 solid fuel, 140 clean fuel/electricity): real-time PM2.5, PM10, CO, CO2 and VOC measured in the kitchen during cooking for 30 minutes to one hour with portable monitors, compared by fuel, kitchen configuration, ventilation and stove type with Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests | F-0508 Household Air Pollution Related to Housing Characteristics a… (2024) | machine |
| Wheeze | OR 3.9 (1.1–13.7) | — · home | cross-sectional study of children in a rural area: wheeze related to the cooking arrangements of the household, to contact with animals, to soil-transmitted helminth infection and to the child's own characteristics | F-1675 Multiple overlapping risk factors for childhood wheeze among… (2022) | machine |
| Acute respiratory infections (ARI) | OR 0.56 (0.40–0.75) | — · kitchen | pooled analysis of three national household surveys: the place where the household cooks related to acute respiratory infection in children under five | F-1699 Geremew Place of food cooking is associated with acute respiratory i… (2020) | machine |
| Wheeze | other 2.46 | — · kitchen | study of households with young children: the cooking arrangement and the stove type related to respiratory conditions in the children, with indoor particle concentrations measured alongside | F-1712 Phillips et al. Sri Lanka Pilot Study to Examine Respiratory Health Effects … (2016) | machine |
Each row is one Finding — a sentence as printed in one study, recorded with its page in the Coridum Knowledge Base. Follow the Finding number for the exact wording and the citation. Checked says who verified the row: machine means every automatic check passed and the surrounding text was read; person means someone read the sentence in the document. Rows are re-checked by a person over time. The studies are curated in the Coridum Knowledge Base; the reading of them together is a Claim, shown separately.
Cite this page
Coridum Research. Cookstoves. Coridum Knowledge G-0132, 16 September 2026. https://coridum.com/k/G-0132/