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

[Nikhil Desai]

Crispin:

The lesson here is that stovers' science and engineering should be focused
on the user needs and preferences, not some non-existent theories of
emissions, concentrations, exposures and aDALYs.

And "air quality people" are not hopeless, only ideologues against solid
fuels like Kirk Smith are hopeless (in both senses of the term). WHO's
prescriptions for PM2.5 emission rates per minute or per MJd are based on
vaporware from boiling water, not facts about combustion or disease.

Guttikunda's entry into "cooking" world is very important for two reasons:

a. His is the only work I have come across on overall urban air quality and
source apportionment that builds upon household and rural emission sources;
b. Such air quality work places particular pollutants and sources in the
context of all exposures and diseases (if data exist), and avoids the
single-minded obsession with stove emissions rates of PM2.5.


Pollution transport and exposures matter, not emission rates, least of all
as tested in labs by questionable methods.

Guttikunda doesn't say so, but he is making a mockery of Kirk Smith/WHO
health propaganda. (He has been Smith's co-author on at least one paper,
and perhaps his district-wise HAP modeling was paid for by GACC.)

This means in turn that pollution is a contextual problem and dealt with
multiple instruments, not by New Source Performance Standard (NSPS) a la
EPA fantasies.

All sources, all emissions, all the time and everywhere. There is not a
penny's worth to be bet on ISO TC-285 work because all it wants is
international comparability and "harmonization", "alignment", in other
words to please the ideologues, not cooks.

Oh, well. What New Delhi has known for over 20 years and hasn't fixed may
not make Dr. Guttikunda very hopeful - some pollution exposures would
decline for some people and some other would increase for those or other
people.

But that is not the job for stove designers. Stop promising "health
benefits" of any particular value - DALY is not a disease and aDALY is not
a "health benefit"; those are BAMG pulp romances for broken hearts. Work
with environmental planners for cleaning up human environments and
promoting modernization of poor people's "human environment."

Nikhil

---------------

On Thu, Oct 26, 2017 at 1:53 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

> 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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