The report by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) on the three-kilometre brown cloud hanging over Asia zeroes in on this kind of fuel burning as the source of the cloud that is disrupting monsoons, lowering agricultural output and creating air pollution leading to respiratory diseases. "The big problem here could be cooking at home," says Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen of the Max-Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany. Crutzen won the Nobel Prize for his …showed first 75 words of 871 total…

…showed last 75 words of 871 total…atmosphere. Although some reports have put the potential toll at tens of millions of lives, the 200 scientists working with the UN Environment Program say the cloud puts ``hundreds of thousands of people at risk'', initially from respiratory diseases. The scientists working on the Indian Ocean Experiment say the threat also comes from changed rainfall patterns, more droughts and floods. In recent months, floods have caused 900 deaths in China and another 900 in Nepal, India and Bangladesh.