Grandmother Constantina and one of her grandsons taking the cows to graze

Every dawn, at five o'clock in the morning, when the temperature in San José de Quero, my beloved town, drops drastically to three degrees Celsius, Grandma Constantina gets up to start her day's work. Although her bones ache from the penetrating cold, she heads firmly and cheerfully to the kitchen to start preparing breakfast for her and her husband, Celso, who is heading to the cowshed at the same time. They have been married for more than fifty years and have seven grown children, four men who work as ranchers in the United States and three women, the oldest of whom is my mother. Grandmother Constantina has two stoves, one that uses gas and was provided to her by a Peruvian government program, and the other that uses dry cow dung as fuel. Despite knowing that it is dangerous for her health, grandma almost always prefers to cook with the latter. "It's the custom," she often says. "I've cooked with it all my life, just like my parents. If they didn't get sick from the smoke, I didn't either. Besides, they lived to be ninety years old and died of natural causes," Grandma Constantina tells us every time we remind her of the danger of the smoke generated by burning cow dung. It is really difficult to change grandma's false beliefs and convince her to stop cooking like this. Although it is true that her parents died at about the age of ninety.

The problems generated by burning cow dung

Although using cow dung as fuel for cooking is a way to take advantage of animal waste and get rid of this debris, this activity can bring great problems for the people who practice it. According to many studies, mud stoves that use cow dung are one of the main sources of air pollution in rural areas. Burning cow dung not only harms the environment but also the people who cook this way, as they are exposed to the smoke generated, which contains dangerous suspended particles. Chronic exposure to this smoke can cause inflammation in the respiratory system and a decrease in the lungs' defense capacity, which leads people to suffer more pneumonia, bronchitis, acute respiratory infections, tuberculosis, lung cancer, and cardiovascular problems. 

The smoke generated by the combustion of cow dung does not seem to affect Grandma Constantina

Grandma Constantina has been exposed to the smoke generated by burning cow dung for most of her life; however, she has not experienced any of the above-mentioned diseases or related symptoms. Grandmother Constantina is definitely a very strong woman and demonstrates great vitality, as despite her advanced age (72 years), she continues to perform a large number of activities every day. After she prepares breakfast and they eat, she milks her cows and usually gets 30 liters of milk which she then sells to the small milk collection truck that belongs to a dairy company. Then, she goes back to the kitchen to prepare lunch and when she finishes, she fills it in tapers that she then wraps with blankets to prevent them from getting cold and fills them in her "quipe" (a kind of backpack that is temporarily assembled with a blanket where different objects are carried). The grandmother does all this because she has to take her cows to graze in a pasture located about two kilometers from her house. Grandma does this activity accompanied by Grandpa Celso. After grazing her cows, they return in the afternoon and tie up their cows in the shed. Then, grandmother prepares dinner, they eat and go to bed at seven o'clock at night. The next day, she goes through the same routine. 

Grandma's routine is really heavy, but she does it without much difficulty. It could be the habit and the great food she eats. Her diet includes guinea pig meat, which contains a high percentage of protein. Could it be because of this that she developed a strong immune system and the smoke generated by the cow dung does not affect her?

Even if the answer is yes, we should not let grandma continue cooking this way because it not only pollutes the air but could also be affecting her silently, and the symptoms could show up much later, although these are all speculations because I am not a health expert. The only thing that is certain is that this practice of Grandma's should stop, but we don't know how to do it. What methods or strategies do you recommend I use? Grandma doesn't seem to be convinced by our words alone.

Reference materials: