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

Fri Oct 27 11:22:51 CDT 2017

Dear Nikhil

I think we are getting to some fine source material. The first link<http://www.urbanemissions.info/blog-pieces/whats-polluting-delhis-air/> is great. Domestic stove emissions exist in a context, stoves are not pills, and a Standard has to be examined on the basis of the service standard required of that Standard. The purpose of a contextual review is to see if the Standard addresses adequately the needs of the users. Following that, we look to see if the test methods applied address the needs of the users of those products. Capiche? It is a two-stage assessment.

Applied to the concept of DALYs and aDALYs there seem to be three stages. The first is whether or not there could be such a thing as an aDALY, (something you have shown to be irrational) then second, the assessment of how well the aDALY serves as a metric, then the testing of a stove to determine from its performance whether it creates the conditions that create an aDALY.

Have I got that correct?

So in Guttikunda’s contextual analysis, the aDALY created a cooking stove disappears into the morning smog like a pedicab at dawn.

Regards
Crispin

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

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