[Stoves] FW: health impact?

Kirk R. Smith krksmith at berkeley.edu
Fri Sep 5 22:15:47 CDT 2014


A few additional comments about the model

--There were some minor formatting glitches in 
the sample report for Rwanda used in the 
webinar.  Here is a corrected version.  No changes in the results.  Sorry.

- HAPIT is designed for assessments within 
specific countries and uses national background 
characteristics for its calculations. Using 
Rwanda to represent the world's solid fuel users 
would assume the same background disease 
characteristics globally. We know there is 
significant heterogeneity among countries, however.

- Because of the nonlinear integrated exposure 
response (IERs) curves for health effects from 
air pollution, we now know that interventions 
need to lower HAP exposures substantially to 
yield large health benefits. A good explanation 
of the IERs can be found in Smith, K. R.; Bruce, 
N. et al. Millions Dead: How Do We Know and What 
Does It Mean? Methods Used in the Comparative 
Risk Assessment of Household Air Pollution. 
Annual Review of Public Health 2014, 35, 
185–206.  (See  http://ehs.sph.berkeley.edu/krsmith/)

- If the scenario you describe were implemented 
(100 million stoves), there would most likely be 
larger health benefits than estimated by HAPIT 
due to the impacts on ambient pollution of 
reducing household air pollution and the effects 
of a large global program on adoption rates. 
HAPIT is catered toward a single intervention at 
a local scale and does not account for added 
benefits due to 'complete' change-outs.

--Even though a typical rocket stove (as 
incorporated as the default calculation in HAPIT) 
may not touch most of the health effects in 
Rwanda, it will still reduce a sufficient number 
to be considered cost-effective based on criteria 
suggested by the WHO.  Introduction of good 
rocket stoves, therefore, might be considered a 
reasonable first step on the way to bringing much 
cleaner cooking to the area if truly clean 
alternatives were not currently feasible.  And of 
course is likely to save fuel and time, which are 
also important benefits of good stoves aside from 
health benefits.   These benefits are not included in HAPIT.

Kirk Smith and Ajay Pillarisetti, UC Berkeley

At 08:14 AM 9/4/2014, Sumi Mehta wrote:

>Thanks, Marc-Antoine,  for your keen interest in 
>ensuring the health benefits of adopting clean 
>cooking technologies.  As you can imagine, this 
>is of very high priority here at the 
>Alliance.  Our aim is to ensure the promotion of 
>cleaner cooking technologies, i.e. the cleanest 
>possible technologies accessible and available 
>for different customer segments.  In addition, 
>since the long term goal is universal adoption 
>of truly ‘clean’ cooking, we are committed and 
>working with partners to ensure that the 
>cleanest possible technologies are developed for all fuels currently in use.
>We are also committed to ensuring that people 
>can shift to cleaner and cleaner technologies 
>and fuels, by working with a wide range of our 
>partners to facilitate increased access and affordability.
>
>As you are aware, there is even a wide 
>variability of performance associated with the 
>range of rocket stoves available.  Indeed, HAPIT 
>offers different performance  scenarios to 
>reflect the range of options in the market (as 
>well as aspirational performance), and the 
>Alliance’s work will strive to cover the range 
>of options available.  In any case, I will leave 
>it to Kirk and his team to reply about the 
>HAPIT-specific questions in more detail....
>
>Regards,
>
>Sumi
>
>Sumi Mehta, MPH, PhD
>Director of Research and Evaluation
>1750 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Suite 300
>Washington DC 20006
>tel: +1 202-787-5642
><mailto:smehta at cleancookstoves.org>smehta at cleancookstoves.org
>www.cleancookstoves.org
>
>
>From: Marc-Antoine Pare <<mailto:marcpare0 at gmail.com>marcpare0 at gmail.com>
>Date: September 3, 2014, 2:57:50 AM EDT
>To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves 
><<mailto:stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org> stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
>Subject: [Stoves] health impact?
>Reply-To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves 
><<mailto:stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org> stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
>Hi everyone,
>
>A big confession: having tinkered with stoves 
>for years, I never actually looked into the 
>numbers of stove health impacts. I'm trying to 
>fix that, and I hope you can help!
>
>I mean, yes, I can wave my hands about PM and CO and four million deaths!
>
>But how many deaths (or DALYs) do you avert per 
>stove? Or per 10,000 stoves? Or per 100,000,000?
>
>I thought it would be an easy question to 
>answer, but it's turning out to be quite tricky to even ballpark.
>
>Here is one interesting source. This is from the 
>very recent webinar on Kirk Smith's HAPIT tool.
>
><http://www.cleancookstoves.org/resources_files/hapit-results-rwanda.pdf>http://www.cleancookstoves.org/resources_files/hapit-results-rwanda.pdf 
>
>
>This report considers 25,000 households.
>If you provide all of those households a rocket 
>stove, you save only 0.75 lives per year.
>
>If you take the GACC's target 100,000,000 households, that would mean
>
>0.75/25000*100000000 = 3,000 lives saved worldwide annually.
>
>What am I missing there? This seems so small.
>
>Some speculation:
>
>Kirk Smith mentions in the HAPIT webinar that 
>even a small amount of PM2.5 is still harmful. 
>Perhaps biomass stoves just don't get the number low enough?
>
>I think this would fit with the chart in the 
>linked PDF that shows that stoves only reduce 
>deaths by <5% for indoor air pollution. A few 
>times in the HAPIT webinar, they mention "a lot 
>of lives are still left on the table."
>
>This also seems to agree with something I found 
>in Christian L'Orange's dissertation:
><http://digitool.library.colostate.edu/exlibris/dtl/d3_1/apache_media/L2V4bGlicmlzL2R0bC9kM18xL2FwYWNoZV9tZWRpYS8yNDYyOTQ=.pdf>http://digitool.library.colostate.edu///exlibris/dtl/d3_1/apache_media/L2V4bGlicmlzL2R0bC9kM18xL2FwYWNoZV9tZWRpYS8yNDYyOTQ=.pdf 
>
>
>Figure 33 shows that Envirofit G3300 stoves only 
>have a 3% (or so) impact on "Adjusted Relative Risk" (of death)
>
>
>Please do not worry about hurting my feelings in 
>correcting these numbers. Am I thinking about 
>this the wrong way around? Have I punched the numbers in incorrectly?
>
>Also, I would be very interested to read more 
>good papers on health impacts for stoves. It is 
>all really quite interesting work. I feel bad that I didn't look at it sooner.
>
>Best,
>Marc Paré
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