[Stoves] News (CCF 2017): Blame the rural poor for Delhi's ills

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Nikhil

This is starting to look like a war against cooking. No doubt there will be a ‘solution’ offered that will only cost $100 bn per year in subsidies.

None of this means we should not continue developing very clean burning appliances. The air quality people may be hopeless by I am not.

I have discovered a remarkable clean burning Chinese stove that has been hidden from view behind a high academic wall. More on that separately.

Crispin



From: Nikhil Desai [mailto:pienergy2008 at gmail.com]


Rural cooking smoke is making delhi air pollution worse<http://www.thehealthsite.com/news/rural-cooking-smoke-is-making-delhi-air-pollution-worse-ag1017/> TheHealthSite 26 October 2017.



Dr Guttikunda did a nice modeling study for HAP origins in India and has also made impressive starts in urban air quality source apportionment studies. Like all studies, however, assumptions rule and data are weak.

It takes considerable gall, then, by these editors at a pop health portal to assert that "rural cooking smoke is making Delhi air pollution worse," and to claim the reason allegedly being "Over the past decade, research has shown a dramatic drop in the amount of household air pollution coming from inside Delhi."

Oh, HAP in Delhi declined. But what has that got to do with, um, the price of eggs?

The editors acknowledge that Dr. Guttikunda's work of course shows contribution from "industry, transport, dust, waste burning, seasonal crop burning (outside Delhi), power plants, and diesel generator sets." But still blame cooking and heating by the poor outside Delhi limits "These emissions not only impact the air quality in rural areas but, ultimately, impact the ambient air quality in Delhi as well, contributing up to on average 10% of ambient air pollution and higher during the winter months when space heating needs peak with temperature drops."

Not only is there no basis for this claim, concentrations do not translate into proportionate increases; even if they did, there is no uniform dose-response relationship for all peoples at all ages. (The IER and WHO deceit). Air monitoring stations are not ubiquitous and the quality and usability of data is dubious, as Dr Guttikunda or any other user of Delhi air quality data would point out. These monitors do not capture many air pollutants at the lower levels or where many poor are concentrated; particulate and gaseous pathogens from urban wastes are a prime example.

Someone should just walk around within Delhi city limits from mid-December to early February to see how much biomass smoke originates within Delhi itself.

Only WHO and Kirk Smith get away with solid fuel PM2.5 emission rate per minute and per MJd - neither of which can be controlled - and cook up DALYs and aDALYs. It beggars imagination to assume that one source control - and even that, uncontrollable use - will somehow magically improve air quality for everybody.

Read Dr Guttikunda's March 2016 piece, What’s Polluting Delhi’s Air?<http://www.urbanemissions.info/blog-pieces/whats-polluting-delhis-air/> and a January 2017 piece How Delhi Knew What To Do To Fix Its Air Pollution in 1997 – But Didn’t Act<https://thewire.in/97529/delhi-pollution-1997-buses/>.

Nikhil

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