The 17th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change met in Durban in December 2011. Negotiations were heated and acrimonious, as the world desperately searched for new ways to avoid the toughest of questions—how to drastically reduce emissions to keep the world somewhat within safe levels and how to do this while ensuring equity. With uneasy answers, the easy solution was to push the world to another round of messy negotiations for a new treaty, protocol or legal instrument or something like that.

Humankind faces the most prolonged and worst exposure to pollution within the four walls of its homes indoors where biomass combustion spells a quiet doom for millions. Surprisingly, most research has chosen to ignore this problem in favour of the mor