[Stoves] personal pollution monitors (Andrew)

[Andrew Heggie]

On 23 December 2016 at 20:50, Traveller <miata98 at gmail.com> wrote:
> What do these monitors measure and what do those measurements mean?

Nikhil they measure particulates in micrograms per cubic meters of
air. Various types and some claim to measure "black carbon" from
diesel exhausts
>
> Once the assumption of equitoxicity of all PM2.5 is given up, and so long as
> the concentration at any given time is not immediately irritating to eyes or
> nasal passages, what do we know of predictability for individual dosages,
> especially over short periods?

I know nothing and I am neither recommending nor disapproving of them,
simply put; health practitioners are citing concentrations from wood
burning stoves as being responsible for more particulate pollution
than diesel cars in my neighbourhood and I'd quite like to see some
comparisons of my own using similar methods to theirs.

Bearing in mind there are "lies, damned lies and statistics" a
statistician interviewed on the local TV  suggested that banning all
internal combustion engines in London (and this may or may not include
jets flying in to Heathrow) would increase everyone's life by 30 days,
he didn't say whether that was every Londoner or everyone living in
England.

I drove an open cabbed diesel engined machine for 35 years and I don't
know what effect that added to my pollution intake, then again 30
years ago I lived under the plume of the world's worst nuclear
disaster and don't know the effect of that though I'm a long way
through my allotted three score and ten so it doesn't really matter.
>
> Dosimetry of ionizing radiation distinguishes according to source,
> composition (alpha, beta, gamma, X), and duration (one-time max, cumulative
> max). Some of us remember the huge controversies in the 1960s about these
> and the UNSCEAR, about RAD v. REM.

OK this is a tangent and too far off topic, I was using it as an idea
of the sort of thing I wanted to try but measuring daily particulate
dose rather than radiation.
<snipped>
>
> If the epidemiology of Black Lung is not that precise, where does that of
> PM2.5 exposure from wood smoke, inside and outside the kitchens, stand?

I don't know either but I guess  once indoor air pollution is cited as
a problem then measuring it is a start.

I do wonder why we have gravitated to PM2.5 when 15 years ago only
pm10 seemed to be mentioned.

> Of course, nobody need take me at my word. I

I wouldn't dream of doing so

> I have COPD,
COPD?

Andrew