[Stoves] NIH and Gates Foundation-Funded Research to Measure Health Benefits of Clean Cookstoves

[Traveller]

Tom:

I wonder which part of this thread ended up in SPAM and whose SPAM box.

This "Chronic Disease" might be a bit of red herring. The share of
"non-communicable diseases" in the "risk factor" theology has been
increasing and so is the "chronic disease" syndrome. (Doctors treat an
individual with a disease and with a particular profile of risk factors.
Public health people do computations, not medicine.)

For this kind of research, concentration and exposure measurements are
enough.

I think research purity would require that they have some "control group"
of "traditional" cooking.

I suppose they will boil pots of water in both, and ignore all other
determinants of health such as nutrition and income. (Or extrapolate from
what they have. Or do meta-analysis of literature. Or cook up some more
methods.)

Yes, some protocols will be required.

Maybe someone wants to prove Kirk Smith wrong - for him saying LPG is "the
fuel that could save millions of lives every year. • By definition!"

That comment has great depth to it -- the way "Burden of Disease" has been
computed is by treating "Solid Fuel Use" as the sole source of Household
Air Pollution (with quantities and emission factors cooked up in collective
fantasies). Therefore, LPG is the savior fuel BY DEFINITION.

I have no problem with that, just with the assumption that solid fuel use
is by definition "dirty". Fuels don't have "dirtiness" embedded in them;
processed solid fuels can achieve better combustion and of course highly
controlled combustion and proper ash management can also achieve far
cleaner combustion that what is assumed to be the case. (Yes, the evidence
of exposures to pollutants from "traditional solid fuel consumption" is
spotty, and extension to countries and the globe is partly conjectural,
partly model hocus-pocus, and partly satellite data.)

Chronic disease - and chronic pain - are mysteries. See A river of lost
souls runs through western Colorado
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-river-of-lost-souls-runs-through-western-colorado/2016/11/03/154fd1a0-8651-11e6-a3ef-f35afb41797f_story.html>,
Washington Post 6 Nov 2016 and Millions of Men Are Missing From the Job
Market
<http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/17/opinion/millions-of-men-are-missing-from-the-job-market.html?_r=0>,
Editorial, NYT 16 Oct 16.

Round up some air pollution data to attribute suicides to.

For a Few Dollars More, or a Fistful of Dollars, we can put together The
Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. (Where's Clint when we need him?)

Nikhil


On Sun, Nov 6, 2016 at 1:00 PM, Tom Miles <tmiles at trmiles.com> wrote:

> The Global Alliance for Chronic Disease (CACD), which is coordinating the
> study, appears to be looking at LPG as an alternative to wood and not in
> combination with wood as discussed in the “context” thread. There is no
> mention of protocols or comparisons among fuels. What is being used to
> represent “wood” smoke?
>
> https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-contribute
> s-global-effort-prevent-manage-lung-diseases
>
>
>
> The study appears to be the result of a 2015 funding opportunity
> announcement and is a joint project of NIH, the Gates Foundation, the
> Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (GACC), and the Global Alliance for
> Chronic Diseases (GACD). If I have the correct announcement LPG wasn’t
> specified in the original solicitation. Second hand cigarette smoke was.
> The solicitation was directed only to  universities. Emory University will
> conduct the study.
>
> http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-HL-16-012.html
>
>
>
> Are there studies which address the use of multiple fuels and the impact
> of improved cook stoves?
>
>
>
> Tom
>
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