[Stoves] MUST CHARCOAL BE A CAUSE FOR CONCERN?

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Otto

You certainly have a way with words.

Before criticising Kevin you should learn more about people in 'poor'
countries. We in the oh-so-superior West think that smoke is a bad thing,
that anyone with 'common sense' would know that.

Read and learn:

In Moto Grosso in Brazil, people are VERY aware that fires can create smoke
and that it is very beneficial. This is diametric opposition to the Western
medical view.  Without it the Nambiquara would die younger. Dying young from
malaria or any of numerous other diseases carried by mosquitoes is not
preferable to learning how to creatively use something as useful as biomass
smoke.

At night when the mozzies are particularly bad, people light a smoky fire
using damp wood in the room (open fire). They lower a woven cloth over the
doorway so the entire room fills up with smoke until it reaches the lowest
edge of the cloth, then escapes outside. In Swaziland the same technology
was traditionally used in their 'guqa na thandaza' beehive grass huts so it
is probably widely known.

The level of the bottom of the cloth is secured about 25mm vertically above
the nose of the people sleeping on the floor. The whole room fills with
smoke down to that level and kills the mosquitoes as they enter the room.
The people sleeping on the floor are protected throughout the night or as
long as the smoke lasts. You already knew this, right?

If you brought a nice clean-burning gasifier with low CO into these homes,
they would ask, "What foreign idiot invented a stove that can't make smoke!?
Duh! Have they no common sense??"

Replacing open indoor fires in Mozambique will definitely increase the
incidence malaria and probably other diseases born by roof-dwelling insects.
"He died young from malaria, but at least he didn't die of black carbon
smoke inhalation as an old man!"

Stoves function in a complex medical and environmental and economic matrix.
Reducing fuel consumption reduces prices and puts people out of work - often
the only paid work available. Food prices are depressed internationally
because of vast US and EU dumping of subsidised production. Growing food is
therefore not usually a viable option, though it would be the obvious
alternative.

People who buy fuel, and who buy less when they have an improved stove, will
spend the money on other things - usually not things provided by the fuel
industry workers.  

Stove producers, often cited as providing employment, have other products
they can sell and rapidly switch if their stove making business drops off.
And there are not many of them compared with fuel suppliers.

Stove and fuel promoting requires tough decisions made after considering
many implications. Some efforts are misplaced.  Look at the efforts made to
ban or suppress paraffin on the basis that it is a 'dangerous, smelly, smoky
fuel' responsible for 'burning thousands to death'. Jet aircraft burn
paraffin very cleanly. It is the STOVE not the FUEL! Crikey. Get a grip.

Let's elevate the quality of discussion to the point where the content
provides useful guidance.

Regards
Crispin