[Stoves] Noise pollution and premature mortality

[nari phaltan]

By the way the noise levels outside the house or hut in developing
countries far outweigh what is in the stove. Quite sometime back I had
written an article for Huffington Post on this issue.
http://www.huffingtonpost.in/dr-anil-k-rajvanshi/could-noise-pollution-be-making-us-sick-and-angry_a_21454917/

The original article with refrences is at:
www.nariphaltan.org/noisepollution.pdf

Cheers.

Anil


Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI)
Tambmal, Phaltan-Lonand Road
P.O.Box 44
Phaltan-415523, Maharashtra, India
Ph:+91-9168937964
e-mail:nariphaltan at gmail.com
           nariphaltan at nariphaltan.org

http://www.nariphaltan.org

http://nariphaltan.org/about-2/awards/  Awards for NARI staff
http://nariphaltan.org/nari-in-press/  NARI in press


On Thu, Jul 27, 2017 at 9:49 AM, Nikhil Desai <pienergy2008 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Crispin:
>
> You have brought this discussion back from noise pollution to PM2.5
> pollution by solid fuel stoves, so it is no longer "off-topic".
>
> I didn't find the EEA and WHO claims on "premature mortality from noise
> pollution" extraordinary at all, just curious about their sources of energy
> data to compute Leq.
>
> I don't know about noisy versus quiet stoves -- except the Primus pressure
> stove versus Nutan or Umrao wick kerosene stoves in my childhood - but all
> you have to do is measure dB in some lab test, with an "adjusted" WBT
> protocol. It doesn't matter what the background noise is, and how it
> changes, nor even that your data is for different populations
> (age/sex/geography/geneology) or outside the 55-80 dB range.
>
> Just claim to have done some meta-analysis and then use the "hypothetical
> exposure–response relationship between noise level (Ldn) and risk of
> cognitive impairment" and linear extrapolation as used by the EEA and/or
> WHO - i.e., IHME.
>
> You ask "Is it true that the first assumption about solid fuels, that they
> are ‘dirty’, is being validated by the numbers derived from that self-same
> assumption?"
>
> It's not even that. To call solid fuels "dirty", there have to be some
> notion of what the emission rates are and what the consequences are, what
> the pathways are. When you are looking at the 4+ billion life-years
> (including lost, and of those who have died "post-maturely) of the human
> cohort that died in 2015, there is no specific assumption I have yet been
> able to trace in the public domain about fuel quality and quantity,
> emission rates, concentrations, exposures, disease profiles, or deaths.
>
> You see, appearances to the contrary, there is no "bottom up" model of
> emissions to morbidity. Rather, GBD is a "top down" Blame Allocation Tool
> (BAT).
>
> Quite batty, you might say. There is "no there there". I know Jim Jetter
> and Kirk Smith did a paper on developing emission estimates and referred to
> some tests. But tests are not measurements of actual use by 3 billion
> people. ready to be sacrificed at the "premature mortality" cult of IHME
> and WHO.
>
> No doubt, there are many scattered measurements of HAP - emission rates,
> concentrations, - by experiments. I haven't totaled up the 2011 WHO
> "emissions database" literature about how many people in total, when and
> where, but this is an old industry of experiments.
>
> Experimental data are not applicable to the world at large with the huge
> diversity across geographies and cultures, over time, among the 4 million
> premature deaths attributed to HAP. That is HAP hype. I plead totally
> agnostic; all I see in the "top down" exercise is some references to
> satellite data (not very good for the depth of opacity) and global
> circulation models, plus indefensible assumptions of equitoxicity and the
> Inttegrated Exposure Response. As far as I know, the cooked up premature
> mortality data have NOT been used to validate these assumptions. That would
> be too transparent a deceit.
>
> I don't care how many premature deaths are attributed to noise or PM2.5 or
> indecent exposure or violating God's Law or papal commands. All I care is
> the predictability and policy relevance. I re-assert that these are ZERO.
>
> More later if you wish on the commonality between noise pollution and air
> pollution DALY cakes.
>
> Nikhil
>
> On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 3:38 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
> crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear Nikhil
>>
>> This is absolutely extraordinary. You mean I can get aDALY credits for
>> changing a noisy (they are called Roarer heads for a reason) kerosene stove
>> to a quiet and serene wood pellet stove?
>>
>> I would never have guessed that. I can even save the children. Who knew?
>>
>> I am interested in the assumptions that lie behind the models for a
>> simple reason: if an assumption, called ‘A’, is made, and then various
>> modeling of exposure and effects is delivered into a model of health
>> consequences, at some point the result could be used to ‘create’ the claim
>> that based on the modeled health effects ‘B’, ‘A’ is a fact. Maybe I should
>> write ‘fact’ because that would a carefully constructed and cleverly hidden
>> loop where ‘A’ leads to health consequence ‘B’ which as a stand-alone
>> number, can be used to claim that ‘A’ must be true because ‘B’ is true and
>> leads to ‘A’.
>>
>> Isn’t that what is happening? Is it true that the first assumption about
>> solid fuels, that they are ‘dirty’, is being validated by the numbers
>> derived from that self-same assumption?
>>
>> Thanks for your attention to details
>> Crispin
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Crispin:
>>
>> Your news on UK solid fuel stoves led me to another article on the same
>> webzine - EU warning over air quality outlook<http://www.airqualityn
>> ews.com/2015/03/03/eu-warning-over-air-quality-outlook/> 3 March 2015.
>>
>> The European Environment Agency is quoted as saying,
>>
>> "Road traffic is considered the greatest contributor to noise exposure in
>> Europe, and most recently the EEA estimates that environmental noise
>> contributes to around 10,000 premature deaths due to coronary heart disease
>> and stroke each year."
>>
>> That's Europe-wide and for 2011. I am glad to see WHO Europe imprimatur.
>> I quote from WHO Europe Burden of Disease from Environmental Noise<
>> http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/136466/e94888.pdf>
>> (2011)
>>
>> "Exposure–response relationship
>>
>> For a quantitative risk assessment and the derivation of guidelines for
>> public health noise policy, a common exposure–response curve is required.
>> The risk estimates obtained from different noise studies can be summarized
>> using the statistical approach of meta-analysis.
>>
>> Definition of exposure
>>
>> Energy-based indicators of exposure (Leq) are adequate and sufficient for
>> assessing the relationship between long-term exposure to community noise
>> and chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disorders. While single event
>> noise indicators can be useful predictors (as additional information) for
>> assessing the effects of acute noise (e. g. sleep disturbance) (112),
>> integrated noise indicators (e.g. a year’s average noise level) are
>> suitable predictors in epidemiological studies for assessing the long-term
>> effects of chronic noise exposure."
>>
>>
>> Leq is "weighted equivalent sound pressure level" over certain hours (4
>> hours for night-equivalent and 12 hours for day-equivalent".
>>
>> I don't see how Leq are computed from "energy" data except that diesel
>> sales to construction and landscaping industry may be used to compute some
>> noise levels using "noise emission factors". And maybe small industry
>> surveys and power plants can also do the same. Lawn mowers and tree cutters
>> are the most significant noise I hear these days, apart from the keyboard
>> clicks (sure to cause premature death).
>>
>> No matter, they have a dose-response curve from meta-analysis. As
>> reported in the Executive Summary:
>> Cardiovascular diseases
>>
>> The evidence from epidemiological studies on the association between
>> exposure to road traffic and aircraft noise and hypertension and ischaemic
>> heart disease has increased during recent years. Road traffic noise has
>> been shown to increase the risk of ischaemic heart disease, including
>> myocardial infarction. Both road traffic noise and aircraft noise increase
>> the risk of high blood pressure. Very few studies exist regarding the
>> cardiovascular effects of exposure to rail traffic noise.
>>
>> Exposure–response relationships
>>
>> Numerical meta-analyses were carried out assessing exposure–response
>> relationships between community noise and cardiovascular risk. A polynomial
>> function was fitted through the data points from the analytic studies
>> within the noise range from 55 to 80 dB(A):
>>
>>  Estimated burden in western Europe
>>
>> Based on the exposure data from the noise maps of EU Member States, it is
>> estimated that the burden of disease from environmental noise is
>> approximately 61 000 years for ischaemic heart disease in high-income
>> European countries.
>>
>> Cognitive impairment in children
>>
>> The case definition of noise-related cognitive impairment is: The
>> Reduction in cognitive ability in school-age children that occurs while the
>> noise exposure persists and will persist for some time after the cessation
>> of the noise exposure. The extent to which noise impairs cognition,
>> particularly in children, has been studied with both experimental and
>> epidemiological studies.
>>
>> Hypothetical exposure–response relationship
>>
>> Based on available evidence, a hypothetical exposure–response
>> relationship between noise level (Ldn) and risk of cognitive impairment was
>> formulated: all of the noise exposed children were cognitively affected at
>> a level as high as 95 dB(A) Ldn, and no children were affected at a
>> relatively low level, such as 50 dB(A) Ldn. A linear relationship in the
>> range of these two limits was assumed as a basis for a conservative
>> approximation of YLD.
>>
>> Estimated burden in western Europe
>>
>> If one extrapolates the exposure distribution and population structure of
>> Sweden to western European countries, the estimated DALYs for the EUR-A
>> countries are 45 000 years for children aged 7–19 years.
>>
>> There are striking parallels to the "data free", "reality free" war on
>> solid fuels by WHO's "Global Burden of Disease from Air Pollution".
>>
>> The GBD cult must declare that GBD has zero predictive value. Which means
>> zero policy relevance.
>>
>> Failing which, you and I can develop $/aDALY scheme for our advanced
>> noise-blocking glass technology for buildings.
>>
>> Nikhil
>>
>>
>
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