Cookstove Safety
Small wood cookstoves are used by 2-3 billion people worldwide, often in developing nations where modern sources of power are limited or non-existent. These wood stoves and hand-made solar, liquid, or gas stoves have numerous health and safety issues as well as being labor intensive to use. Safety is an important issue as burns, scalds, cuts and loss of property are highly prevalent when using an open flame in a small kitchen. The following documents provide standardized methods of testing stove safety to minimize the harmful factors of stove use. Indoor air pollution is not included in the analysis as much research has been completed on that topic elsewhere.
Most Recent Version and Ratings
These files are updated as new stoves are rated or old stoves have safety modifications. The testing methods may also have slight modifications as they are utilized and developed by more people. The 'Comments' file includes suggestions from users to improve the process. Please view and send your own comments to atlas@iastate.edu
Summarized Evaluation Procedures
Stove Safety Comparisons
Comments from users w/ reply
as of Jan 28, 2006
M.S. Thesis: Risk Analysis and Safety Evaluation of
Household Stoves in Developing Nations
0. Front Matter

1. Introduction
2. Background Investigation
3. Identification of Cookstove Hazards
4. Processes Considered
5. Safety Guidelines
6. Implementation
7. Findings and Future Work
8. References
9. Definitions
Appendix A. Cookstove Data Set
Appendix B. Stove Safety Comparisons
Appendix C. Example Safety Evaluation
Appendix D. Summarized Evaluation Procedures
Last updated: Feb, 3 2006