[Stoves] report with dissapointing results from cleaner cookstoves (Crispin)

[Traveller]

Crispin:

I take it you are setting for me an example of sane, measured, respectful
analysis of the "stoves and health" claims and counterclaims.

I tried to explain the phoniness of WHO "solid fuels use" database or
"emissions database". (I did review their Reviews, and started writing, but
sometimes couldn't stop laughing, and sometimes got too irritated to
continue.) I also tried to explain the phoniness of EPA's PM2.5 approach -
the assumption of equitoxicity in particular. I then laid out the case
against use of IER to invent "relative risk" estimates.

And abuse of all such fiction, passing the pseudo-science off as an
advance.

But that - in the eyes of Ron  - is sacrilege. Rant. Animosity.

Ron has enjoyed the luxuries of stove science while some 400 million poor
people have died prematurely in the last 30 years.

The poor must not have any great expectations.

I am happy to be a heretic. How can you not be one?

Nikhil





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Message: 6
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2016 17:53:01 +0000
From: Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com>
To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
        <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Subject: Re: [Stoves] report with dissapointing results from cleaner
        cookstoves
Message-ID:
        <YTOPR01MB0235E00D20E0012967E08627B1850 at YTOPR01MB0235.CANPRD
01.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM>

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Dear Andrew

The message from the large scale investigation supports other observations:

The health impact of stove smoke has always been based on estimations that
only apply to populations.

The health impact of stove smoke is over-estimated by those estimations.

The health impact estimates are based on several quirky things, one of
which is that all particles of PM2.5 are equally toxic (the concept of
equitoxicity). There is no factual foundation for such an assumption.

The health impacts are probably not concentrated on particular diseases.

You will often see quoted the idea that "The PM2.5 particles are the
smallest and they get deeper into the lung..." with the idea that the
smaller the particle, the more easily the cause 'disease' and the more
easily they get into the lung, and the more easily and the deeper they go,
the more effect they will have. Right? Is this a misrepresentation of the
claims? I don't think so.

At the NESCAUM/NYSERDA meeting in Albany last week there was again a
presentation on the 'ability' (or chance) that a particle of size x will
get into the lung and cause a problem. It happens that the current thinking
is focused on the head passages, not the deep lung. The coincident claims
for the deep lung are COPD and pneumonia and particles. But small particles
do not get into the deep lung so easily - the head passages are very
efficient at getting small particles humidified, enlarged, and trapped by
the mucous membranes.

This is the same idea they emphasized at the Brookhaven National Lab
presentation by NYSERDA. It is not the deep lung that is the problem, they
are worried about the smallest particles being trapped in the upper body
and conducted via the opening in the skull, through the flesh, to the
brain. They worried much more about trapping in the nose and communicating
cell by cell to the brain where such particles have been found. That has
little to do with getting them into the deep lung, into cells there, and
thence to the red blood cells, which is also a current meme.

The efficiency with which small (10-20 nm) particles get trapped in the
deep lung is quite low. The smaller the particle, the less the chance of
being absorbed. One guy gave me a spirited defence of the potential for
danger to the lung saying that diffusion of particles into the cells was a
greater danger than 'being trapped'. Well, I will have to think about that
mechanism. The main point, supported by charts of efficiency of trapping
things, is that the upper head is the worry point, not the lungs.

So, it is not such a big surprise that the effects on disease occurrence
was not detectable. Reducing PM to zero in the kitchen is not anything
close to removing PM2.5 from people's lives. Witness the burning garbage,
outdoor large scale cooking, grass fires, fugitive dust, smoky bus engines.
There is a lot in the environment other than cooking fire smoke.

Nikhil has been at pains to try to communicate the change in the relative
risk from a reduction or complete elimination of cooking smoke does not
have a predictable effect on any individual because we don't know what
their other risks are. The information simply doesn't exist to make such a
calculation. Models of models of models have results in health impact
estimates that have "false concreteness". The error is to treat an idea as
if it is a real thing. The Global Burden of Disease is not a real thing, it
is a way of discussing risks within a national cohort. One person in a
population of 1 million does not have a fixed 'millionth' of the GBD.

The study proceeded on the basis that they do, and that changing one of the
contributing factors would produce a particular, detectable outcome. If it
had, such a correlation would have been spurious because it is based on a
conceptual flaw at the root.

This definition of Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness is sourced from here<
https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/fallacies_list.html>. Stove smoke impacts
individuals. Reducing exposure impacts them individually. The impact of
that change is also individual, even on average, is not susceptible to a
calculation based on a GBD number. The GBD is an abstraction negotiated by
a committee.

Regards

Crispin


Fallacy of Reification (Also called "Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness" by
Alfred North Whitehead): The fallacy of treating a word or an idea as
equivalent to the actual thing represented by that word or idea, or the
fallacy of treating an abstraction or process as equivalent to a concrete
object or thing.  In the first case, we might imagine a reformer trying to
eliminate illicit lust by banning all mention of extra-marital affairs or
certain sexual acts in publications. The problem is that eliminating the
words for these deeds is not the same as eliminating the deeds themselves.
In the second case, we might imagine a person or declaring "a war on
poverty." In this case, the fallacy comes from the fact that "war" implies
a concrete struggle with another concrete entity which can surrender or be
exterminated. "Poverty," however is an abstraction that cannot surrender or
sign peace treaties, cannot be shot or bombed, etc. Reification of the
concept merely muddles the issue of what policies to follow and leads to
sloppy thinking about the best way to handle a problem. It is closely
related to and overlaps with faulty analogy<https://web.cn.edu/kwh
eeler/fallacies_list.html#faulty_analogy_anchor> and equivocation<
https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/fallacies_list.html#equivocation_anchor>.

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