Household light makes global heat: high black carbon emissions from kerosene wick lamps.

Kerosene-fueled wick lamps used in millions of developing-country households are a significant but overlooked source of black carbon (BC) emissions. We present new laboratory and field measurements showing that 7-9% of kerosene consumed by widely used simple wick lamps is converted to carbonaceous particulate matter that is nearly pure BC. These high emission factors increase previous BC emission estimates from kerosene by 20-fold, to 270 Gg/year (90% uncertainty bounds: 110, 590 Gg/year).