[Stoves] PM emissions from engines

[Nikhil Desai]

Crispin:

I take a different view on your comparison of Kyrgyzstan v. Malawi studies.
>From what I can tell of the Kyrgyz study - I haven't yet read full report
on methodology and results - it is qualitatively different from the Malawi
study in various respects, the main one being that the former is for the
same households before and after an intervention whereas the latter had a
different fuel/stove combination altogether.

Also, I maintain heating and cooking are different functionalities, so to
call these two studies "functionally the same" is mistaken. That "changing
the stove improves health in specific ways" is not - repeat, NOT - obvious
and categorical for all cookstoves.

Besides, the "neighborhood" effect may not be insignificant. In Kyrgyzstan,
the intervention stoves may have emissions too low to have made any effect
outdoors, which was probably not the case in Malawi.

In short, I do not give much weight to household emissions and exposure
testing. Your Kyrgyz project needs to be implemented at scale to show an
overall "modernization" impact that I expect of it - better comfort,
insulated homes, better windows, what not.

Too much money is being made off talking about poor people's lungs. People
are more than oxidation machines.

And cookstoves are also more than oxidation machines.

Nikhil




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


On Tue, Jun 6, 2017 at 5:15 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

> Andrew sez:
>
> "Okay, so far part of a good answer: so are you actually saying that
> indoor air pollution is not a quantifiable cause of bad health, yet we know
> respiring particulates is?‎"
>
> Exactly. We can claim that indoor air pollution has a negative, if
> unquantified, impact on health. Quantifying that impact is expensive.
>
> The Malawi study and the Kyrgyzstan study are functionally the same:
> observe the health of HH members one by one in homes with and without the
> stoves claimed to be improved. ‎The Kyrgyzstan investigation also measured
> the exposure to which individuals were subjected which is about as good as
> it gets.
>
> The results were quite different. In Malawi the background PM overwhelmed
> any impact / reduction in exposure caused by the stove, at least on a
> macro-impact level. Child respiratory infections did not change in a
> statistically significant way. In Kyrgyzstan the needle moved to zero which
> is very significant.
>
> Was the disease in the unimproved stove homes caused by smoke? Low room
> temperature throughout the day? Cold at night? Gases not considered
> measurable PM?
>
> It is clear the effect was produced by the stove system. In house after
> house the effect was seen, not just taken together and shown
> 'statistically'.
>
> So we can take that as 'obvious and categorical evidence' that changing
> the stove improves health in specific ways. To claim that PM causes
> bronchitis is a stretch, however. PM is not a disease agent any more than a
> stove is a pill. Removing all PM from a chronically under-heated home
> ‎might have no effect at all.
>
> For all the noise usually made about how women do all the cooking and
> young children hang around them ‎getting exposed, the Kyrgyzstan project
> showed that men are more exposed to PM2.5 than everyone else. Put that in
> your corn-cobbie and smoke it!
>
> In the Naryn region, Dr Sooronbaev says 100% of adults over 40 have COPD‎.
> That is probably caused directly by exposure to stove smoke indoors.
>
> Crispin
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