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Life Guide U.S. essentials
English

Don't cook or heat with coal and firewood; switch to electricity or gas

  • High value
  • Evidence A
  • Buys life
  • Costs a lot
  • Takes minutes
  • No willpower

In plain words

People who cook with coal or firewood have about a 10% higher chance of dying over the same period; those who heat with coal or firewood are about 14% higher. People who have switched to electricity or gas have a 13%–33% lower chance of dying than people still burning coal or firewood.

Cost

A rural household has to change its stove, and with fuel costs that is a few hundred to over 1000 CNY a year. You change once and it's done, with no ongoing time. Most city dwellers already use electricity or gas.

What you get

A Chinese chronic disease follow-up study (observational, not assigning groups) of 271,000 (27.1万) adults without cardiovascular disease. People who cooked with solid fuels such as coal and firewood had about 11% higher risk of death than people who used electricity or gas (HR 1.11). People who heated with solid fuels were about 14% higher (HR 1.14). People who had switched from solid to clean fuels, compared with those still burning, were about 13% lower for cooking (HR 0.87). For heating it was about 33% lower (HR 0.67). Outdoor PM2.5 is a separate account. Pooling 104 follow-up studies, each 10 µg/m³ higher in long-term exposure raised the risk of death from natural causes by about 8% (RR 1.08). Natural causes means deaths from disease rather than accidents.

Notes

These studies only followed people. Households that switched fuel are often also better off, so the “risk drops to 0.67 times” number is mixed with the effect of household wealth. As for outdoor PM2.5, there is little an individual can do beyond moving, wearing a mask or using an air purifier. There are no studies of air purifiers with mortality as the outcome, so this section gives no figure.

Evidence grade
A : Specific numbers from meta-analyses, large cohorts or randomized trials; for law and policy, the statute or official text.
Sources
  1. Yu K 等 (2018). Association of Solid Fuel Use With Risk of Cardiovascular and All-Cause Mortality in Rural China. JAMA. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2018.2151
  2. Chen J, Hoek G (2020). Long-term exposure to PM and all-cause and cause-specific mortality: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Environment International. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2020.105974

Mentioned in

Translated from the Chinese original. Original book, section 2, tip 29. This section is about health and medicines. It is general information, not a substitute for a doctor’s diagnosis or prescription. Content may be out of date and rules differ by place. When you actually deal with an agency, a doctor or a court, follow what local officials, doctors and lawyers tell you. Disclaimer