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

Fri Dec 9 13:09:05 CST 2016

To add a question to this very interesting debate -  when studying the
effects of air pollution on the GBD how does one adjust for outliers like
the damage done from things like ''the practice of European oil companies
and traders exporting “African quality” diesel – highly polluting fuels
that could never be sold in Europe.'' (https://www.theguardian.com/global-
development/2016/dec/06/five-west-african-countries-ban-
dirty-diesel-from-europe-nigeria-ghana) etc. on the DALYs stats? Many of
these things have happened within mine and my parents generation, they only
banned leaded fuel in the 1990's here in Kenya for instance.  Where I live
in Nairobi
<https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jul/10/no-escape-nairobi-air-pollution-sparks-africa-health-warning>
it
is getting hazier as we grow.  “ There is the burning of rubbish, cooking
with inefficient solid fuel stoves, millions of small diesel electricity
generators, cars which have had their catalytic converters removed and
petrochemical plants, all pushing pollutants into the air over the
cities. “Compounds
such as sulphur dioxide, benzene and carbon monoxide that have not been a
problem in western cities for decades may be a significant problem in
African cities. We simply don’t know.”

Even though Dr. Mortimer found out (and I wish they went into more detail
here) '' He only got the bad news right at the end,
<http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38160671> because the data had been
"blinded" - the researchers deliberately kept hidden whether a given set of
medical records were from a family who had been given a stove, or from a
family in the control group.'' his researchers may not of been as clean as
his stoves, I for one always welcome papers like these about air pollution
and our environment, and I especially welcome all of your comments on them.
It's part of the first steps to actually knowing what and where the
problems even are. And thankfully at least air pollution seems to be making
the news more and more these days.  https://theconversation.com/
africa-has-an-air-pollution-problem-but-lacks-the-data-to-tackle-it-69057.

One thing I personally would like to advocate for at this point is that for
those of us who manufacture biomass cookstoves, especially charcoal and
firewood burning ones, incorporating any aspects of advocating for woodfuel
security (actual tree planting, seed and information distribution, social
media awareness about forestry etc etc) is our responsibility for not only
a future source of fuel for our customers but also cleaner air and cooler
cities.
http://blog.nature.org/science/2016/10/31/planting-healthy-air-can-urban-trees-help-clean-up-pollution/
  After all,  since we make stoves that make it easier, cheaper and more
efficient to burn trees, we should think hard about growing many more.

In regards Ron to your other email,* ''If Nikhil continues in this
anti-stove-development-vein, I ask the stove list moderators to put his
comments into a review status.  This would thereby limit his remarks to
those that help, rather than harm, stove development.''* I do not think
censoring people is a practical (or ethical) idea, after all who would
review the comments?

------
Teddy

*Cookswell Jikos*
www.cookswell.co.ke
www.facebook.com/CookswellJikos
www.kenyacharcoal.blogspot.com
Mobile: +254 700 380 009
Mobile: +254 700 905 913
P.O. Box 1433, Nairobi 00606, Kenya

Save trees - think twice before printing.

On Fri, Dec 9, 2016 at 2:00 AM, Ronal W. Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net>
wrote:

> 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  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 .  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   (Thanks to the folks maintaining
> this older work.)
>
> 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
>
> GBD = Global Burden of Disease;  see http://thelancet.com/gbd
>
> IER= Integrated Exposure Response  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
> 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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