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Extracts from Ofcom Complaint, by Category: Falsification/Manipulation

2. Falsification/Manipulation of WHO Figures

Cut to scene in small mud hut somewhere in Kenya]

[Narrator]

Anne Mougella is about to cook a meal for her children. She is one of the two billion people – a third of the world’s population – who have no access to electricity. Instead they must burn wood or dried animal dung in their homes. The indoor smoke this creates is the deadliest form of pollution in the world. According to the World Health Organisation, 4 million children under the age of five die each year from respiratory diseases caused by indoor smoke; and many millions of women die early from cancer and lung disease, for the same reason.

[Comment 126: The “four million children” figure appears to have been made up by the film-maker – the World Health Organisation fact sheet gives a total figure of 1.6 million people per year: http://tinyurl.com/258364.

Inhalation of wood smoke is certainly a major public health problem, but it is entirely false to imply (as the programme does) that action to combat climate change would somehow make this problem worse or more persistent. On the contrary, provision of more efficient stoves is an important component of many carbon offsetting schemes, with the aim of simultaneously reducing deforestation and promoting human health (see for example http://tinyurl.com/38r7sp [ClimateCare].]

(In breach of the 2003 Communications Act Section 265, Ofcom 5.4, 5.5, 5.7, 5.11, 5.12)

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Section 2 / Comment 126: WHO figures on respiratory diseases]


Page 12 of 16	Final Revision	Last updated: 11 Jun 2007