[Stoves] PM emissions from engines

Tue Jun 6 04:44:09 CDT 2017

Andrew:

"Surely we won't see an improvement in life expectancy for a generation?"

1. Life expectancies at birth, age 5, and at age 50 (or now even 60, 70)
are but one measure of health and have been increasingly broadly
everywhere, with significant sub-national (racial, geographic, class)
disparities
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/05/08/u-s-life-expectancy-varies-by-more-than-20-years-from-county-to-county/>
that are difficult to analyze. Except for a drop in the US last year -
apparently driven by a spike in White middle age death rates and suicides -
life expectancies have been rising and can be expected to keep rising as
nutritional levels improve, behavioral changes are in the "right direction"
(avoidance of tobacco, unsafe sex), and health care services improve.

See WHO's Life Expectancy
<http://www.who.int/gho/mortality_burden_disease/life_tables/situation_trends_text/en/>.
But
also note Almost half of all deaths now have a recorded cause, WHO data show
<http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2017/half-deaths-recorded/en/>
.

That is, more than a half the deaths in 2015 did NOT have a recorded cause
of death.

This is where IHME's jiggery-pokery starts. Assigning a cause of death as
well changing a cause of death from an actual record to something else. The
rest is programmers' and statisticians' "getting away with murder", "a way
of life".

2. "Premature mortality" is a different concept altogether. In 2008 or 2010
(now I forget) IHME changed the definition of "premature mortality" from
"before national life expectancy at birth" to "before age 86". This
understandably has huge implications -- it sharply increased the numbers of
"prematurely dead" (a part of what I call "killing by assumption") and
increased the weight of the creaky, cranky people like me.

This has significant political implications. Not everybody on this earth is
destined to live till 86 simply because that is the ideal length of life
under best conditions for physical, mental, societal wellbeing.

When deaths under 5 or under 15 decline - from malaria, TB control, say -
the total YLL (Years of Life Lost) shrink more, compared to when cancer
treatments extend the life of a 75-year old to 77 years.

There is no - repeat NO - quantifiable link yet between lifetime exposure
to PM2.5 pollution from all sources (indoor, tobacco smoking, second hand
smoking, ambient from all natural and anthropogenic sources) and life
expectancy at any particular age.

Ron Larson apparently disagrees. He should get me a precise number for
reduction in my DALY if I stop living in this polluted urban environment of
India and start living in a bubble professors live in.

Nikhil

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nikhil Desai
(India +91) 909 995 2080
*Skype: nikhildesai888*

On Tue, Jun 6, 2017 at 2:50 PM, Andrew Heggie <aj.heggie at gmail.com> wrote:

>  On Tue, 6 Jun 2017 03:03:23 +0000,Crispin Pemberton-Pigott
> <crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >This throws even more confusion on the subject, gasoline engines produce
> more PM than diesel engines, presumably running on standard fuels.
>
> The article is misleading in that very few spark ignition engines are
> direct injection, though the proportion may be rising. Also
> particulates are not small molecules but rather large agglomerations
> of compunds.
>
> It does lead to another  question though and that is what is more
> significant, the number of particles or their mass? Plainly if we
> restrict our attention to PM4, as perceived wisdom is larger particles
> are efectively filtered out by the nasal passage, then as particle
> mass goes up with the cube of it's dimensiones then a device producing
> many small pm1 particles can emit 8 times as many particles as one
> emitting pm4 before it reaches the same mass.
>
> >
> >"The laboratory studied the emissions of 7 gas engine vehicles equipped
> with direct-fuel-injection systems. The research found that they emit from
> 10 to 100 times more particulates than modern diesel engines. In fact, they
> have higher particulate emissions than older diesel without particulate
> filters.?"
>
> In this country all diesel vehicles have to have particulate traps and
> many have urea injection to reduce NOx (itself a precursor of
> particulates amongs other associated problems)
>
>
> Therein lies another worry: Nikhil's scepticism  does raise the
> question about premature death in that many of the people affected
> will have spent most of their lives exposed to higher levels of
> particulates, in UK the majority of adults smoked in the 50s, we had
> lead in fuel and open burning much of which has decreased to
> negligible amounts. Surely we won't see an improvemt in life
> expectancy for a generation?
>
> Don't let this drift too far as vehicles are not a pertinent subject
> though particulate emmissions are but using Nikhils equitoxity concept
> what are the differences between fine fly ash (50% silica) and black
> carbon with Poly Cyclic Aromatic compounds adsorbed on their surface?
>
> Andrew (in the good enough camp)
>
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