[Stoves] Poor indoor air quality caused by a stove kills 4 on Mt Everest

[Anand Karve]

Dear Crispin,
your post reminded me of a study that we conducted about 20 years ago in a
village that did not have electricity. We had installed improved stoves
with chimneys in that village and monitored the indoor air pollution in the
house. During daytime, when the cooking was going on, the pollution level
was quite low but in the night it rose. There were theories that the
particulate matter that rose up with the hot air, settled down in the
night, causing the high reading of the particulate matter in the night.
Later we found out that the nocturnal air pollution was caused by the crude
kerosene lamps (a bottle full of kerosene, with a wick stuck into the lid
of the bottle) which were kept burning throughout the night.
Yours
A.D.Karve

***
Dr. A.D. Karve

Chairman, Samuchit Enviro Tech Pvt Ltd (www.samuchit.com)

Trustee & Founder President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)

On Thu, May 25, 2017 at 8:11 AM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

> Dear Friends
>
> I have a nephew who is a very fit former snowboarding bum with a diploma
> in physical education, but is now an orthopaedic surgeon of hands. Some
> years ago he was an annual volunteer doctor at Base Camp on Mt Everest and
> we discussed at that time the paraffin stove designed for GIZ and the
> (then) Free State Technikon. It is known as the FSP stove - extremely low
> CO and self-extinguishing if it is overturned.
> [cid:image003.jpg at 01D2D4DE.D0CCB2F0]
> FSP Stove - the heavy version. 2006.
>
> [cid:image004.png at 01D2D4DE.D0CCB2F0]
> FSP Stove - light version. 2004
>
> It operates with a 1.5 metre pressure provided by an elevated fuel
> container.
>
> The reason for using paraffin/kerosene is that on Mt Everest it is hard to
> stay warm and the only fuel available that is energy-dense is kerosene from
> India. My nephew said it was 'low quality' and there were a lot of problems
> with it. I asked what that meant and he said it was simply 'dirty' and did
> not burn well.
>
> Of course I attributed that to the stove, not the fuel. A filter and a
> good stove will burn any grade of kerosene, even one with paint thinners in
> it (etc).
>
> Tonight I heard about 4 climbers from Slovakia, Australia, the USA and
> India who died of CO poisoning<http://www.foxnews.
> com/world/2017/05/24/4-bodies-found-inside-tent-at-highest-
> camp-on-everest.html> inside their tent at Base Camp 4. This year the
> weather has been particularly difficult and brutally cold with snowfall
> well above average. They closed the tent and kept the stove going in an
> effort to remain warm.
>
> In that condition, it would probably not have made much difference whether
> the stove made a lot of CO or not. The CO2 accumulation would eventually
> have made a problem above 40,000 ppm, 100 times the ambient average. At
> that altitude their red blood cells would already have been struggling to
> carry enough O2 so any CO would have been a serious issue.
>
> Perhaps we should go back to the tiny FSP stove and make it available for
> these climbers.
>
> Regard
> Crispin
>
>
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