When it comes to air pollution, the simple life isn’t necessarily the safest. The most poisonous atmosphere in Asia is found not in rapidly modernizing cities like New Delhi or Beijing but inside the kitchens of homes in rural Asia. Millions of families in the countryside heat their abodes and cook with open fires using cheap fuels that belch carbon monoxide and other noxious fumes at level up to 500 times international safety limits. Rural women and children often spend hours each day in poorly, ventilated kitchens, breathing this putrid air. “This is a problem that has been around forever, as long as humankind has existed, but it’s been ignored,” says Eva Rehfuess, a World Health Organization expert on indoor air pollution. “If you walked into these kitchens, your eyes would start tearing and you would find it difficult to breathe. It’s terrible. ”

　　The WHO estimates that indoor air pollution cause 1.6 million deaths per year in developing countries around the world, up to 555,000 of which occur in India alone-and overwhelmingly it’s the poor who are dying. Villagers have no choice but to use wood, coal or dung fires, raising the risk that young children will be killed by carboj-monoxide poisoning or a bad case of pneumonia ravaging weakened lungs. Likewise, the women who typically keep their home fires burning are vulnerable to chronic respiratory diseases. “Day in and day out for 50 years, some of these women might be cooking six hours a day, exposed to pollutions,” says Rehfuess.

　　Curtailing indoor air pollution can be as simple as replacing open wood fires with better-ventilated cookstoves, but more sophisticated stoves can cost up to $120. China and India, home to the world’s largest rural populations, have launched ambitious national programs in recent decades to supply villagers with safer stoves at subsidized prices. But the programs have not always worked, in India, for example, some 33 million stoves were given out free to villagers in rural areas from 1984 to 2000—but because of a lack of health education or follow-up maintenance, most families abandoned the cookstoves for their old fires within a few years.

　　That’s left nongovernmental organizations like the shell Foundation to step into the gap. It has begun a pilot program with local Indian NGOs in a pair of rural states to develop and market clean, wood-burning stoves that cost just $5-$10 yet can reduce emissions by up to 40%. The project is on track to sell 1000,000 stoves by the end of 2005, and the groups plan to expand the program nationally in the future. Program manager Karen Westley says Shell and its partner NGOs made an effort to sell their customers not just more efficient tools but also the idea that different is better. “You have to make sure people actually want that damn thing,” says Westely. “They need to make the connection between having a better stove, breathing less smoke and experiencing better health in the end.”

　　But habits ingrained by tradition can be hard to break. “They’ve been living with this always, and so have their mothers and grandmothers,” says Rehfuess. “You have to give people the felling they can do something about it.” And that they’ll breathe a lot easier for their trouble.