[Stoves] Domestic stoves, air pollution and health ==> Back to basics
Traveller
miata98 at gmail.com
Sat Jan 7 11:57:09 CST 2017
Harold:
Thank you. I agree with your statement of "fundamental error" and that
there has been "a grave perversion of sound science, technology and
regulation to try and conflate two or more of the above four stages into a
single standard. "
Domestic stoves are just a special case; EPA's "mercury rule" and "clean
power plan" are among other examples of what pervert scientists can do to
conflate emissions and health (or global change and personalizing it).
Stove designers and proponents shouldn't feel alone.
I hope you tell me about my misrepresentations of science and the
scientific method; I too am not alone.
I know of the science and regulatory history of air quality as they have
evolved in the US. I also hope this thread attracts others who can tell of
other countries. Apart from "large source" (power plant) regulations, I
know nothing about other countries.
And when it comes to "small source" regulations in developing countries, I
doubt there is much at all, except for anecdotal instances of shutting down
industrial estates or home businesses. (Just started reading some material
on South Africa by Patrick Bond.)
My view is, WHO and EPA are on to shocking abuses of science -- declaring
"IAQ Guidelines" and then doing WBTs in labs to develop "international
standards" for efficiency and emission rates of household cookstoves (via
what I call the "box paradigm") -- because there is little air quality
science for the poor, even less for the causality between domestic stoves
and disease incidence in the poor.
And evidently little capacity or incentive or courage to challenge this
charade.
I imagine South Africa to be one place where domestic stoves, air
pollution, and health may have been systematically studied - without
meddling by Gateses, Clintons, and Wirths - and technological, regulatory
alternatives explored. (I have done a bit of poverty tourism in Soweto and
a distant settlement, and also did some research into solar water heating
in South Africa, but didn't read any science.)
****
"I will tempt you to doubt, ye even deny, and ask for the evidence."?
Sounds like something from C S Lewis' The Screwtape Letters!
As a devout Hindu, it is my duty to slay sacred cows.
***************
Apart from the Pope, et al. *Lung Cancer, Cardiopulmonary Mortality, and
Long-term Exposure to Fine Particulate Air Pollution
<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/elink.fcgi?dbfrom=pubmed&retmode=ref&cmd=prlinks&id=11879110>
*piece,
authors and contributors of Burden of Disease exercise readily and
consistently caution against abuse of their own work.
Dr. Pope is an economist, not a physical scientist, and his work is not
without controversy. See this Science piece from 2013 - House Panel
Subpoenas EPA for Air Pollution Data
<http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/08/house-panel-subpoenas-epa-air-pollution-data>
(Disclaimer:
I don't support House GOP subpoenas for science research data any more than
I support NY AG's subpoenas to Exxon-Mobil and CEI for their internal
documents.) NIH Associate Director of Science Policy also cautions, in Burden
of Disease and NIH Funding Priorities
<https://nexus.od.nih.gov/all/2015/06/19/burden-of-disease-and-nih-funding-priorities>
(2015)
"NIH’s Office of Extramural Research and Office of Science Policy *collaborated
on an exploratory analysis*, which you can see on our new burden of disease
page <http://report.nih.gov/info_disease_burden.aspx> on RePORT. This page
illustrates how NIH funding levels relate to U.S. and global deaths and
disability-adjusted life years (DALYs)—a measure that quantifies the number
of healthy years of life lost due to morbidity or premature mortality
caused by disease. *This analysis comes with several caveats,* however, and
more information can be found via the methodology link on the disease burden
<http://report.nih.gov/info_disease_burden.aspx> page." (emphasis added)
I have read some other work by Dr. Pope - and some other HSPH luminary
whose name I forget - on particulate pollution and general health damage
figures on coal combustion. There is quite a bit of "theology by
cite-o-logy", the assumption being that few readers would have read or read
citations and those who do are within the tent of the faithful or can be
admonished to keep family skeletons in the closet.
My simple point is, our friends at ISO/IWA have been duped by WHO and EPA,
via GACC, et al., the private sector opportunists who specialize in
derivatives like $/aDALY. (I tinkered with that 15 years ago. I am trying
to remember an Enron man 20 years ago in London who used to fly over every
now and then to discuss tradeable permit scheme for acidic emissions and
CO2. That bandwagon led to the casualties of carbon finance, but at least
there was governmental or intergovernmental oversight on calculations with
a legal basis. This $/aDALY business is purely poverty adventurism.)
*****************
I take exception to only one of your statements:
"That some individuals may have used the term EQUITOXICITY in this sense,
is not intended to be taken literally. To rail against the term is to set
up a straw man argument..."
*** I am afraid this is naive. Equitoxicity is not "loose lips". It is
officially assumed in EPA analyses; I wrote about this in late September on
this list - on a piece on EPA and another piece on Burnett et al. (2014).
This official assumption is necessary, in my view to make use of prior
long-term research with very different composition of particulates --
larger size particulates and SO2 in particular. Now that the concentration
- and exposures - of those in urban air in US and other rich countries have
declined, regulatory zeal (and science funding in support of such zeal)
REQUIRES the assumption of equitoxicity. Because only then people like
Pope, et al. can claim that prior long-term studies are still useful for
exposure-response ratios.
Thank you for the opportunity to clarify. Scientists are honest enough --
read Burnett, et al. or Kirk Smith in their journal articles - to recognize
(as does NIH) that their work to date is extremely restrictive due to the
limitations of data and methods. It is WHO and EPA who have cooked up the
hysteria over PM2.5 generally. Not that it has mattered a hoot in terms of
controlling ambient air pollution in Beijing or Delhi, Bishkek or Tehran,
and I suppose Durban or Mexico City. In the case of stoves, I reckon the TC
285 folks also require WBT, because otherwise PM2.5 emissions from foods
will interfere with their claims about "health protective" emission rates.
[The presumed "link" between emission rates, IAQ, and purported divergence
from WHO "IAQ Guidelines" is a house of cards. More on that below. Nigel
Bruce fooled stovers.]
**************
I have read Dr. Bruce's work on-and-off since around 2000. I think he is an
advisor to EPA, BAMG, or WHO (where he used to work) on this game of
"emissions to aDALYs". I suggest you begin with the documents at the ISO
International Workshop on Clean and Efficient Cookstoves, in particular the
presentation by Dr. Bruce (my comments between three asterisks) :
- "Lack of access to clean, safe energy in home: Indicator: solid fuel
use (SFU) for cooking"
*** SFU was the DEFINITION for unclean and unsafe. Creating a problem by
definition is not science, it's theology. ***
- "Health Outcomes: Child pneumonia • Chronic obstructive lung disease
(COPD) • Lung cancer (coal)
- Burden: 1.96 million premature deaths (2004)"
*** This is where theology gets covered up in models. There is no
particular relationship between "Health outcomes" and "Burden" (of
disease). This is the sleight of hand of the IHME gang of "super-humans".
There is absolutely no basis to link any particular "premature death" to
SFU. By the jiggery-pokery of converting SFU (via fictional assumptions
utterly non-existent measures of fuel quantity and quality or emission
rates in "WHO Database") into Household air pollution (HAP) and then the
hocus pocus of "relative risk", deaths are cooked up. It is simply a LIE to
label "health consequences" and put disease outcomes and "premature deaths"
together. A layman would think that X premature deaths were caused by child
pneumonia caused by household air pollution; NOT SO. But WHO/IHME cooked
up even more such numbers for 1990, 2005 and 2010. This is science in the
service of regulatory fervor. ***
- "Exposure-response relationship"
*** This is modeled nonsense. ***
- "WHO Guidelines will provide key evidence:
– Note process & timeframe in IWA
– Incorporate new evidence as standards evolve"
_____________________
This is how the IWA folly was ratonalized. Under the "guidance" of GACC and
PCIA.
This is how deceit and dumbness met. The marriage of the glib (WHO, GACC,
EPA) and the gullible (ISO, GIZ, ANSI, all the "stove experts").
Also on that website you will find signatories of "Lima Consensus". Just
how much these luminaries could lay claim on the experiential as well as
bookish knowledge of the diversity of solid fuel supply systems, cooking,
individual health characteristics, or even stoves is worth reflecting. As
far as I can tell, these people were all duped. (I am sure many of them are
on this list. Would love to hear their views on how many premature deaths
they hope to reduce by 2020, 2030, 2050, 2070.)
All that to what end?
"Advantages of Tiers and Performance Indicators
• Stepped Tiers
– Differentiate performance
– Demonstrates improvement possible and desirable
• Different Performance Indicators
– Reflect the strengths and weaknesses of individual stoves
– Allow governments and programs to evaluate priorities"
I wonder if all of this was to the satisfaction of the invited "clean
cooking sector" (an idiotic phrase) experts (if that).
Who was to judge on "Indoor Air Quality" Tiers, and on what basis? WHO
"guidelines" of mysterious provenance, and EPA/BAMG "box models"?
I submit cooking food is about a different chemistry altogether -- tastes
and smells.
I think too many people have been in this masquerade ball. They need to
come out and reveal their knowledge of solid fuel cooking and heating, of
people they claim to protect. (I have known some such people but won't
reveal my knowledge!)
ISO was fooled. ISO guidelines on clean cookstoves could save lives, reduce
injuries and pollution <http://www.iso.org/iso/news.htm?refid=Ref1609>
Elizabeth
Gasiorowski-Denis 28 June 2012:
"With open fires and traditional cookstoves causing millions of injuries
and deaths annually, a new document from ISO represents a major first step
towards defining criteria for clean, efficient and safe cookstoves."
GACC CEO is quoted,
"The ISO IWA represents a significant step forward in global efforts to
scale up clean cookstoves and fuels as it provides guidance for rating
cookstoves on four performance indicators: fuel use, total emissions,
indoor emissions, and safety. Standards can give stove makers affirmation
of product quality, let users know they are making a worthwhile investment,
and drive industry innovation."
And Mrs. Clinton:
"“People have cooked over open fires and dirty stoves for all of human
history, but the simple fact is they are slowly killing millions of people
and polluting the environment.. But today, because of technological
breakthroughs, new carbon financing tools, and growing private sector
engagement, we can finally envision a future in which open fires and dirty
stoves are replaced by clean, efficient, and affordable stoves and fuels
all over the world – stoves that still cost as little as USD 25”
The burden of proving their claims is upon ISO/GACC, not you and me. I
stand by my assertions - that the empresses have no clothes.
Sinners can always repent. You and I could start a religion of skeptics.
Wouldn't that be loverly?
Nikhil
---------
On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at 5:17 AM, Harold Annegarn <hannegarn at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Stovers
>
> A) I have been following the debates on stove emissions, health effects
> (dallying with DALYs) and carbon climate neutrality with interest, and
> varying degrees of amusement and despair at the grave (or jocular)
> misrepresentations of science and the scientific method. My interventions,
> under a new thread, are intended to go back to basics of science on air
> pollution and health. I hope thereby to clean up some of the messier
> aspects of recent debates that are based on misconceptions of science.
> (Regrettably, I claim no authority to be able to similarly clarify issues
> of policy, developmental economics or institutional politics.)
>
> B) As a starting point, a draw your attention to the following article:
>
> *Lung Cancer, Cardiopulmonary Mortality, and Long-term Exposure to Fine
> Particulate Air Pollution*
> C. Arden Pope, III
> <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Pope%20CA%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=11879110>,
> PhD, Richard T. Burnett
> <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Burnett%20RT%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=11879110>,
> PhD, Michael J. Thun
> <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Thun%20MJ%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=11879110>,
> MD, Eugenia E. Calle
> <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Calle%20EE%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=11879110>,
> PhD, Daniel Krewski
> <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Krewski%20D%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=11879110>,
> PhD, Kazuhiko Ito
> <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Ito%20K%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=11879110>,
> PhD, and George D. Thurston
> <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Thurston%20GD%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=11879110>,
> ScD JAMA. 2002 Mar 6; 287(9): 1132-1141.PMCID: PMC4037163 (Journal of
> American Medical Association)
> The publisher's full final edited version of this article is available at
> JAMA with no paywall:
> JAMA. 2002 Mar 6; 287(9): 1132–1141
> <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/elink.fcgi?dbfrom=pubmed&retmode=ref&cmd=prlinks&id=11879110>
> .
>
>
> *Abstract*
> *Context*
>
> Associations have been found between day-to-day particulate air pollution
> and increased risk of various adverse health outcomes, including
> cardiopulmonary mortality. However, studies of health effects of long-term
> particulate air pollution have been less conclusive.
> *Objective*
>
> To assess the relationship between long-term exposure to fine particulate
> air pollution and all-cause, lung cancer, and cardiopulmonary mortality.
> *Design, Setting, and Participants*
>
> Vital status and cause of death data were collected by the American Cancer
> Society as part of the Cancer Prevention II study, an ongoing prospective
> mortality study, which enrolled approximately 1.2 million adults in 1982.
> Participants completed a questionnaire detailing individual risk factor
> data (age, sex, race, weight, height, smoking history, education, marital
> status, diet, alcohol consumption, and occupational exposures). The risk
> factor data for approximately 500,000 adults were linked with air pollution
> data for metropolitan areas throughout the United States and combined with
> vital status and cause of death data through December 31, 1998.
> Main Outcome Measure
>
> All-cause, lung cancer, and cardiopulmonary mortality.
> Results
>
> Fine particulate and sulfur oxide–related pollution were associated with
> all-cause, lung cancer, and cardiopulmonary mortality. Each 10-μg/m3 elevation
> in fine particulate air pollution was associated with approximately a 4%,
> 6%, and 8% increased risk of all-cause, cardiopulmonary, and lung cancer
> mortality, respectively. Measures of coarse particle fraction and total
> suspended particles were not consistently associated with mortality.
> Conclusion
>
> Long-term exposure to combustion-related fine particulate air pollution is
> an important environmental risk factor for cardiopulmonary and lung cancer
> mortality.
> |____________
>
> C) The significance of this article for the stove list debates is that:
>
> - It is a primary research article - not a secondary
> summarised/re-interpreted version valorised by the WHO.
> - It deals with *statistical associations (**Risk Ratios) *between
> PM2.5 and lung cancer and cardiovascular mortality over a 16 year period
> for a study cohort numbering in the millions. It does not claim or explain
> causality.
> - It presents statistical correlations of *Risk Ratios of lung cancer
> and cardiovascular mortality. *It does use the concepts of premature
> deaths, a source of heated contestation in StoveList debates. It does not
> enter into a discussion of the financial value of life or DALYs.
> - The study deals comprehensively with the confounding effects of
> smoking - which has a higher Risk Ratio - and mentions in passing other
> factors controlled for and which have elevated Risk Ratios for the study
> population (e.g. gross obesity (level 3).
> - No enhanced Risk Ratio was found in association with PM10 (defined
> in the post-2000 sense of particles below 10 but above 2.5-micron
> diameter).
>
> D) Arising from this, several points of clarity regarding the science:
>
> 1. Establishment of Risk Ratios is a property of the *population
> ensemble* numbering in hundreds of thousands. This* ensemble property*
> of a population cannot be attributed to individuals or small populations of
> a few hundred or thousand. Accordingly, taunts such as "Show me one life
> that has been saved by a clean cook stove", reveal a perhaps jocular but
> nevertheless foolish conceptual misunderstanding.
> 2. *PM2.5 and EQUITOXICITY* (addressed mainly to Crispin).
> PM2.5 is measured as an *INDICATOR* of fine particulate matter (mainly
> in urban atmospheres). Scientists and regulators are well aware that fine
> particulate matter originates from diverse sources and contains particles
> of widely differing physical and chemical composition, and that some of
> these species may be more damaging to the human respiratory system than
> others. Nevertheless, as an INDICATOR of urban air quality, PM2.5 serves
> the purpose of an indicator. (a) It is readily measurable with a moderate
> amount of technical skill and commercially available apparatus; (b) It is
> applicable across a range of conditions in space and time, allowing for
> tracking of trends. (c) The indicator values are easily communicated to and
> understood by the lay public. PM2.5 is again an *ensemble property*,
> and at a superficial level may one assert that all particles comprising the
> ensemble are EQUITOXIC. That some individuals may have used the term
> EQUITOXICITY in this sense, is not intended to be taken literally. To rail
> against the term is to set up a straw man argument, dressed in funny
> clothes designed to scare off the crows.
> 3. However, when it comes to controlling or reducing sources or PM2.5
> in particular localities, then source apportionment studies are needed, to
> establish the relative contributions from diverse sources, that may include
> residential wood burning (also in American cities in colder climates),
> sulphates from coal combustion, diesel soot emissions. Reductions are
> planned and regulated on the basis of cost-effectiveness, reflected in
> State Implementation Plans (SIPs) in USA jurisdictions. Source
> apportionment plans deal with reducing the concentrations of overall PM2.5,
> without going into issues of health effects and consequent economic loss
> due to mortality of morbidity - the domain of epidemiologists, not air
> quality regulators. In the case of specific high toxicity compounds, such
> as asbestos fibres or CrVI (chromium valence 6), other air toxic
> regulations come into play quite separately from the generalised PM2.5
> control strategies.
> On the health effects of various species of particles in the PM2.5
> ensemble (often now referred to as nanoparticles), there are significant
> advances in the last decade of understanding the modes of interaction
> between particles and the human physiological system. One interesting
> finding is that some materials are more active (toxic) in the finely
> divided nano range than one would suppose from the bulk properties of the
> material.
> 4. Inhalation of and deposition of PM2.5.
> Point 2 above leads to the need to clarify misconceptions reflected in
> recent stove list discussions concerning the deposition of particles in the
> human respiratory system.
> Broadly, coarse particles greater than 2.5 microns diameter are
> trapped in the upper airways (nose, throat), while fine particles (<2.5
> microns) proceed into the bronchial system. Particles in the range 300 nm
> (0.3 microns) and less, the bulk of PM2.5 mass, behave similarly to gas
> molecules and are carried in the air stream through 18 bifurcations of the
> bronchial system to the alveolar sacs. Once in the alveolar region,
> governed by laws of diffusion, some of the nanoparticles may reach the
> walls of the alveolar sacs and be dissolved or absorbed and transmitted to
> the blood stream (e.g. nicotine droplets from tobacco smoke). Insoluble
> particles are attached by macrophages (white blood cells) and either
> transmitted away by the lymph drainage fluids, or remain in place
> eventually forming inflexible fibrous tissue (in advanced cases causing
> e.g. silicosis and emphysema). Paradoxically, the very properties that
> allowed the nanoparticles to reach the deepest airways, similarly allow the
> particles to make their way out of the lungs and to be exhaled. In each
> breath, typically only about 60% of particles are deposited, and 40% are
> exhaled. For example, a smoker will still exhale detectable levels of
> nicotine fumes for ten to twelve breaths after the last puff.
> Coarse particles deposited in the upper airways can also trigger
> physiological responses - one need only mention the allergic response to
> inhalation of pollen grains (typically in size range 5 to 50 microns) that
> are trapped in the nose.
>
> E. Arising from this, a personal comment based on my four decades as an
> academic research on atmospheric particles. This point addresses ongoing
> messiness and confusion in the recent StoveList debates (which is a good
> open forum for robust verbal sparring) but more seriously has resulted in
> major conceptual confusion in the debates of the international efforts to
> devise clean stove evaluation procedures and associated performance
> criteria (tiers).
>
> The fundamental error is to try and combine efforts to reduce particulate
> emissions from stoves (source characterisation and emission control
> measures) with Relative Risk outcomes or, even more remotely, with
> premature deaths or DALYs.
>
> 1. Stove experts know about stoves, thermal and emissions performance
> testing.
> 2. Exposure modelling and monitoring of stove emissions concentrations
> in homes and air pollution in general in the ambient environment are
> separate disciplines that do not necessarily fall within the knowledge
> domain of stove experts.
> 3. Correlations between exposure to air pollutants and specific health
> outcomes are established by epidemiologists at a population scale. Even
> relationships between tobacco smoke and adverse health outcomes took
> decades and population-scale studies to establish.
> 4. Testing for causal relationships (i.e. beyond statistical
> correlations) between specific pollutants and human immunological responses
> is properly the domain of specialised medical studies.
>
> As professional scientists, environmentalists, developmental economists we
> are aware of the broad issues of air quality and public health. However,
> when the task was a relatively straightforward assignment: *Develop a
> standard method for testing the energy and emissions performance of a
> domestic stove designed for cooking and space heating*, it is in my
> opinion a grave perversion of sound science, technology and regulation to
> try and conflate two or more of the above four stages into a single
> standard. For well-intentioned students who approached me to supervise a
> project on air pollution and health because they were concerned about the
> health consequences of high smoke concentrations (in South Africa from
> domestic coal combustion), I had to advise them: I can supervise a study of
> ambient concentrations, of the emissions of stoves, or the characterization
> of individual particles or bulk particulate matter. However, as a
> physicist, environmentalist, geographer, I cannot supervise and I cannot
> marshall the resources to do a health based study. If you wish to study
> health effects, then you need to be in a medical faculty.
>
> I rest my case.
>
> A similar argument can be mounted concerning the conflation of stove
> testing and global soil properties, food security, de/reforestation and
> global change, but that may be a topic for a future post.
>
> Best regards
> Harold the Sceptic
>
> (N.B. I am a sceptic by vocation and profession, for such is the nature of
> science. To those who wish to believe, go the church on Sunday or mosque on
> Fridays. On all other days of the week, I will tempt you to doubt, ye even
> deny, and ask for the evidence.)
>
>
>
>
>
> Harold Annegarn
> Energy Institute
> Cape Peninsula University of Technology
> Mobile +27 (0)83 628 4210 <+27%2083%20628%204210> Office +27
> hannegarn at gmail.com <hannegarn at outlook.com>
> hannegarn at outlook.com
>
>>
>>
>
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