[Stoves] [Stoves Digest, Vol 81, Issue 21] Another attack on solid fuels by public health adventurers

Thu Aug 10 16:03:05 CDT 2017

Tom:

Two days ago you called me a kid who wouldn't have heard of Al Capp. (I
knew Al Capp and Andy Capp; they were friends of mine.)

And today I am a "grumpy old man"?

I gave you some "positive", "useful", constructive" in the sense of
"contextual testing and promotion" (not my phrase but from a World Bank
team) and "modern cooking" (my phrase in the document I sent a few months
ago). If you found it wanting - i. e., if you bothered to read instead of
dismissing unpleasant news - why didn't you let me know that I was useless?

Methinks that people used to living in facts-free world like to keep doing
and saying the same thing over and over again, even as they have failed and
failed again.

The dream lives on, so long as other people's money is available without
transparency and accountability.

I saw that with nuclear power zealots and I see that with other faithful.

I only asked that Crispin and others read the HAPIT narrative. It is an
honest description of the horrendously narrow factual basis of the model
and heroic assumptions required to make any sense out of it.

A critic is free to state his opinions, not rewrite a novel or a stove
protocol, repaint a grotesque portrait or create Integrated Exposure
Response charts of his own.

All this is relevant because you are taken in with the notion that somehow
the GBD has created a "health risk analysis" and that the WHO has a
"health-based" PM2.5 Emission Reduction Targets.

Nothing can be further from the truth. Emissions are not concentrations and
concentrations are not exposures. Plain facts that no amount of jugglery,
handwaving can do anything about. Just ask Michael Johnson, Ajay
Pillarisetti, or anybody else that matter.

I know there is a market for Harlequin romances and pulp fiction, and I
also know children like when their finger painting is put up on the wall.

Do you have any facts to share?

Nikhil

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nikhil Desai
(US +1) 202 568 5831
*Skype: nikhildesai888*

On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 4:10 PM, Tom Miles <tmiles at trmiles.com> wrote:

> It’s the grumpy old man Nikhil again with the same old complaints that we
> have heard before. This doesn’t help anyone. Do you have anything useful or
> constructive to provide for each of the shortcomings you highlight below?
> Some positive new direction that will give stoves a rocket boost?
>
>
>
> Tom
>
>
>
> *From:* Stoves [mailto:stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] *On
> Behalf Of *Nikhil Desai
> *Sent:* Wednesday, August 09, 2017 2:28 PM
> *To:* Discussion of biomass cooking stoves <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.
> org>
> *Cc:* Karin Troncoso <karintroncoso at gmail.com>; Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
> crispinpigott at outlook.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [Stoves] [Stoves Digest, Vol 81, Issue 21] Another attack
> on solid fuels by public health adventurers
>
>
>
> Crispin:
>
> Three quick comments:
>
>
>
> 1. WHO "recommendations" have no value. Just check on ambient urban air
> quality data and status of emission standards for sources small and large,
> new and old, stationary and mobile, around the developing world. The
> faithful refer to the Holy Book; for everybody else there is law.
>
> 2. There is no "safe" level of air quality, just that which cannot be
> ascribed to anthropogenic sources and behaviors (mobility, use of fans or
> chimneys).  I remember some interesting debate back in the 1960s about
> "safe" thresholds. EPA assumes there are none. The question is not "safety"
> but "risk" . So long as scientists get together and claim a risk, the
> regulatory process gets going to determine methods of control. That is
> rightfully a matter of economics, politics, judiciary, and philosophy, not
> mere science, especially environmentalist cult variety.
>
> 3. For Kirk Smith and his colleagues at BAMG and GACC, concentrations are
> exposures. Look up Smith, Mehta, Pillarisetti (or some other order)
> description of HAPIT model. It is fuel-free, stove-free, and even data-free
> (i.e., dependent on the assumptions of equitoxicity and Integrated Exposure
> Response.) You should be satisfied that they do make adjustments for
> "background" PM2.5 (from ambient air; don't know about tobacco indoor) and
> also for chimney.
>
> Will write more on chimneys some other time.
>
> Nikhil
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Aug 7, 2017, at 8:13 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
> crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Karin
>
>
>
> I am taking a moment to respond to your message of 27 May. It concerns
> your very important comment about the reduction in PM and CO. Because it
> has been a while, I will repeat the relevant paragraph:
>
>
>
> “*The note that you cited [from] our paper saying that the Philips stove
> reduces PM2.5 concentration by only 66% was a cite of the work by
> Muralidharan et al., 2015. It is based [on] a KPT not in a WBT: “Here, we
> tested a traditional clay chulha cookstove (TCS) and five commercially
> available ACSs, including both natural draft (Greenway Smart Stove,
> Envirofit PCS-1) and forced draft stoves (BioLite HomeStove, Philips
> Woodstove HD4012, and Eco-Chulha XXL), in a test kitchen in a rural village
> of western India. Compared to the TCS, the ACSs produced significant
> reductions in particulate matter less than 2.5 µm (PM**2.5) and CO
> concentrations (Envirofit: 22%/16%, Greenway: 24%/42%, BioLite: 40%/35%,
> Philips: 66%/55% and Eco-Chulha: 61%/42%), which persisted after
> normalization for fuel consumption or useful energy. PM**2.5 and CO
> concentrations were lower for forced draft stoves than natural draft
> stoves. Furthermore, the Philips and Eco-Chulha units exhibited higher
> cooking efficiency than the TCS. Despite significant reductions in
> concentrations, all ACSs failed to achieve PM**2.5 levels that are
> considered safe by the World Health Organization (ACSs: 277–714 μg/m**3 or
> 11–28 fold higher than the WHO recommendation of 25 μg/m**3;)*”
>
> Two issues arise from these comments. The first is the idea that the stove
> is the only or major reason for the PM2.5 concentration measured.
> Obviously if the stoves had been fitted with chimneys the concentration
> would have been as low as zero, which is to say, that stoves would have
> contributed as little as nothing and any measurement would reflect the
> background level. IF the ambient concentration is 100 then a perfect stove
> will not help.
>
> Even if the stoves produced varying amounts of smoke, the test was of the
> influence of that stove in a particular kitchen operated in a certain way
> by a certain cook producing a certain meal. It was the kitchen that had the
> largest influence on the concentration.  I acknowledge that there is value
> to having a *relative* performance difference, but mostly you were
> testing the kitchen, not so much the stove, with my concession that the
> stoves are different as to the amount of smoke emitted.
>
> The numbers reported: are they personal exposures? If so, then people in
> the same room will be subject to quite different exposures. If it was
> ‘ambient in the room’ then we do not know what the personal exposure was
> because it depends on where you are in the room. Ambient at head height
> varies around the room.  As the WHO has reported in their meeting minutes,
> the concentration in a room is highly variable depending on the ventilation
> rate and the position of vents. In spite of that knowledge, they assume (at
> present) that the concentration is immediately equal through the volume of
> the room which is obviously unrealistic.
>
> My second point the idea that, somehow, the WHO has a justifiable claim
> that 25 µg/m3 is ‘safe’ or ‘healthy’ with the implication that the number
> is supported by some evidence. Having looked into the way the value, or
> ‘target’, was generated, I found there is literally nothing real behind the
> number. It is all estimations, assumptions and guessing. I don’t think
> there is much danger this observation will be contradicted.
>
> There are several useful conclusions one can draw from the study.
>
>    1. Chimneys should be promoted as a way to reducing exposure to smoke
>    by cooks and children as a matter of urgency when the kitchen is enclosed.
>    Whatever the health impact of some emissions from common fuels, chimneys
>    make everything better.
>    2. Where the stove is openly vented, a stove hood is appropriate.
>    3. People cooking outdoors are at very low risk of exposure to cooking
>    smoke, and about ¼ of India’s cooking takes place outside – maybe more. In
>    Indonesia there are 4 classic kitchens only one of which is enclosed.
>    4. Unless it is already in the ambient air, cooking outdoors offers
>    little exposure, and smokeless stoves are rarely, or never, going make a
>    tangible difference. Ulaanbaatar heating stoves are a good example of an
>    exemption to this, but they are heating stoves, primarily. Crakow is
>    another.
>    5. Some weak and unjustified arguments have been made about ambient
>    air pollution from stoves being a major cause of *indoor* air
>    pollution in other homes ‘because of the use of chimneys’. If this were
>    true in any community, it means that only an integrated air quality program
>    could make a big difference, as is being implement in Hebei Province in
>    China. That pilot includes a heating and cooking stove component (800,000
>    units) with a view to improving ambient air quality in Beijing, next door.
>    But it is one of 51 measures being conducted. Getting the smoke outdoors by
>    hood or chimney where it can be greatly diluted is obviously a good start.
>
> The current discussion here and behind the scenes is concentrating on the
> main flaws in the WHO’s case for claiming what constitutes a healthy
> environment:
>
> Flaws:
>
>    - The assumption that all particles below 2.5 microns in aerodynamic
>    diameter are equally toxic
>    - That a certain list of diseases are caused by a certain exposure to
>    PM2.5
>    - That a certain list of diseases are exacerbated by a certain
>    exposure to PM2.5
>    - That certain diseases are caused by exposure to particular sources
>    - That an ambient concentration causes a certain exposure
>    - That a certain emission rate creates a certain ambient concentration
>    - That the smoke emitted by a stove can be meaningfully reported as an
>    ‘emission rate’ without reference to constancy (pulses) and independent of
>    time.
>
>
>
> We need a reboot on this whole matter. There are far too many things
> assumed being given the status of ‘truth’.  I suggest the main reason for
> the reboot is because there is a lot of money being directed, or
> redirected, based on really poor quality information and guesses. I
> appreciate that you are making measurements and creating a base upon which
> to construct a more realistic version of reality.
>
>
>
> Regards
>
> Crispin
>
>
>
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