[Stoves] report with dissapointing results from cleaner cookstoves (Crispin)
Ronal W. Larson
rongretlarson at comcast.net
Thu Dec 8 17:00:05 CST 2016
List cc Crispin and Nikhil:
Looks like another dreary day and night. Sigh. Before addressing the places where my name appears below, I first have to work on completing last night’s response to Nikhil.
What I see below are two stove “experts” - saying that those dealing with the health aspects of stoves are doing it all wrong. But the good news is that we are talking about stoves finally. I will try to explain tomorrow why their following exchange makes no sense. (and I suppose there will be another half dozen messages by then on this topic - as happened on the one I am going to).
I hope those interested in this ongoing health topic will go back and read an exchange between Nikhil and myself in September. http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/2016-September/012166.html <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/2016-September/012166.html> That older message strongly relates to this new set below.
To read the following exchanges you need these further explanations:
DALY and ADALY (respectively in years and $) are many places below, but a simple start is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability-adjusted_life_year <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability-adjusted_life_year> . I encourage all readers to decide if these are valid units - and if not what should replace them. Nikhil says they are bogus numbers
WHO = World Health Organization; they sponsored a webinar featuring Dr. Michael Johnson - who developed a nice model disparaged (above) by Nikhil. I believe some of the failure to see large health effects in the other thread we are talking about is contained in Michael’s modeling. The particular webinar with Dr. Johnson is saved at http://www.pciaonline.org/webinars <http://www.pciaonline.org/webinars> (Thanks to the folks maintaining this older work.)
http://www.who.int/indoorair/guidelines/hhfc/recommendation_3/en/ <http://www.who.int/indoorair/guidelines/hhfc/recommendation_3/en/> explains why NOT to use coal as a fuel (this re a topic raised in the exchange below)
IWA is explained at http://cleancookstoves.org/technology-and-fuels/standards/iwa-tiers-of-performance.html <http://cleancookstoves.org/technology-and-fuels/standards/iwa-tiers-of-performance.html>
GBD = Global Burden of Disease; see http://thelancet.com/gbd <http://thelancet.com/gbd>
IER= Integrated Exposure Response http://www.who.int/phe/health_topics/outdoorair/databases/AAP_BoD_methods_March2014.pdf <http://www.who.int/phe/health_topics/outdoorair/databases/AAP_BoD_methods_March2014.pdf>
I am only a beginner (and expect to stay that way) on this part of stove science. I suggest the task of this list’s members is to decide whether Nikhil and Crispin are better authorities on the topic of this exchange than the cites above. Everyone is welcome to trust Nikhil and Crispin on these matters, but I tend to trust the stove side of all this presented by Prof. Kirk Smith of UC-Berkeley - who I believe would not agree with much of their below exchange. See http://static.squarespace.com/static/53856e1ee4b00c6f1fc1f602/538570c1e4b071a53f15e518/538570d9e4b071a53f15e9cc/1401254105672/DFID-SE4.pdf?format=original <http://static.squarespace.com/static/53856e1ee4b00c6f1fc1f602/538570c1e4b071a53f15e518/538570d9e4b071a53f15e9cc/1401254105672/DFID-SE4.pdf?format=original>
This graph from about 20% through the Ppt is key to our stove work. I am now checking whether it likely that any stove (likely to be a TLUD) can get to the WHO-desired 10 ug/m3 (without a chimney). Anyone know?
Ron
> On Dec 8, 2016, at 11:17 AM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Nikhil
>
> >I take it you are setting for me an example of sane, measured, respectful analysis of the "stoves and health" claims and counterclaims.
>
> I can’t set you up – you have been there for years without any intro from me.
>
> >I tried to explain the phoniness of WHO "solid fuels use" database or "emissions database".
>
> There are serious problems with this matter going back to before the IWA meeting. There were foundational errors that I think the students involved, at the time, did not realise were errors. They had been led down the garden path a bit by earlier, widely repeated and improper claims that ‘fuels have emissions’, that there were ‘clean fuels and dirty fuels’, that fuels had ‘a combustion efficiency’ and that the GBD meant something about an individual’s health risk.
>
> This last error is what drives the whole nonsense about declaring an individual stove user’s life expectancy to be lengthened a little by switching to a cleaner stove, or even longer by switching to LPG. That is a linearity in that claim: less smoke guarantees a longer life. That is the essence of the claim.
>
> Maybe it is true. It is not provable for every individual. Maybe it doesn’t have to be. What is provably false is the claim that a GBD ‘number’ can be turned into a codified risk reduction and life extension for a particular intervention. There is a mania sweeping the funding community hoping to “monetize DALY’s”. That would require calculating the averted DALY’s and assessing a value on each averted disability adjusted life year.
>
> Monetizing DALY’s requires firmly tying smoke exposure to specific diseases or sets of diseases. These had been assume before. Trying to nail it down to specifics requires large scale medical observations. That is, as you pointed out earlier, quite different from guessing that smoke aggravates asthma or turns a cold into pneumonia.
>
> >(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.
>
> The problems/dysfunctions of IER’s are well documented, perhaps not well known. There is a lot of guessing buried inside. In the back corridors both IER’s and DALY’s are laughed at, meaning, not believed to be ‘real’. That doesn’t mean people won’t take them seriously, but I don’t think there is much belief they represent something real.
>
> >And abuse of all such fiction, passing the pseudo-science off as an advance.
>
> Well, there is the question: do those doing the ‘passing off’ believe they are real or not? If it can be dressed up a bit, will money flow?
>
> >But that - in the eyes of Ron - is sacrilege. Rant. Animosity.
>
> He made his opinion very clear. He did not however present any evidence or opinion that there is something real, valid, substantial, factual, supporting the idea that there is a clear link between stove smoke and specific diseases or the shortening of lives by calculable amounts.
>
> >Ron has enjoyed the luxuries of stove science while some 400 million poor people have died prematurely in the last 30 years.
>
> They did, according to the standard definition (apparently now popular) that all people should have lived to be 86 and that anyone who dies before that dies ‘prematurely’. Causes for that prematurity have been assigned, and PM2.5 is one of the ‘causes’ assigned its due proportion.
>
> >The poor must not have any great expectations.
>
> If they look over the list of how they are supposedly dying, I think their reaction will be great expectorations.
>
> >I am happy to be a heretic. How can you not be one?
>
> Sorry, there is nothing heretical about your position. Scientific assessments and methods are canonical. The heretics are those who eschew them. The modeling of exposure in kitchens (which is available on line – you can download the WHO committee notes) is downright humorous. I say that because when I describe it to experts they all laugh.
>
> Regards
> Crispin
>
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