[Stoves] News: Cooking pollution by propaganda - GACCing India

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Philip

I certainly remember that story and John Davies in Secunda had similar ones on death from CO on cold winter nights – about 3 families per township per cold winter night.

I was speaking about ambient air in the community, not trapped in a home. The highest we seem to get at SeTAR when checking before tests is 2 ppm and normally 1. That is in central West Johannesburg – a place definitely affected by township emission, though not as much as Benoni.

What have you seen for open air CO?

I assumed that Darpan was talking about both that and indoor emissions or outdoor cooking emissions around the fire, rather than 20 feet away under a tree.

Having now seen some coal stoves that hold the CO below 20 ppm in the exhaust, would that be safe enough for indoor use? Or is that an impossible calculation because the ppm value is not related to the exposure save by also knowing the total mass emitted?

Thanks
Crispin



Dear Crispin

“I am very interested that you think that CO from coal-fired cooking stoves is a measurable pollution problem anywhere.” Surely I have told you about the Qalabotja macroscale experiment? We had some assistance from the US DoE, who sent someone with a host of portable monitors for just about everything you could think of. The first evening, he visited a shack with an mbaula keeping the place warm. His CO monitor went off – the reading was 1600ppm and there was an alarm at, I think, 90ppm and another at 1000ppm.  He had been shown how to reset the 90ppm alarm, but no-one had thought to tell him how to reset the “Get-out-now” alarm. For 24h we had to put up with this damn thing shrieking, then the battery ran out.

Many of the shacks heated in this way showed these unbelievable CO levels. The inhabitants all complained of headaches and weakness in the morning. It almost seems you can adapt to high levels.

Later we did a study on CO deaths in Soweto. In winter there would be two or three events per week when the whole family died in the night.  All we had to do was buy the Sowetan and read the death notices.

It IS a measurable problem!

Philip

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