[Stoves] WHO and 600,000 dead children

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Clean Burning Friends

This has big implications for cooking stoves without chimneys.

I found this at WUWT on the weekly update which this week is a particularly rich source of links.

The one below refers to the WHO meeting last week. The opinions are not mine. The reference to 'steam' is this: often when trying to make a fuel (coal, for example) look "dirty" a ‎photo will accompany the article of a power station emitting steam from a chimney or cooling tower, photographed at dawn or sunset with the sun on the far side of the steam. This makes white steam look black, and the accompanying text will say something negative about the emissions.  The Guardian newspaper is well known for doing this. In this case the reporter uses the same trick.

The BBC covered this story last week claiming that living in Delhi during the annual burning of the straw (which they showed) was like smoking 40 cigarettes per day. I have already shown how that calculation is made: a cigarette exposes the smoker to 40-45 mg of PM2.5. The actual exposure for an adult living 24/7 in 160 micrograms/m^3 (bad days in Delhi) is 1/28th of a cigarette‎ per day. So when the exaggeration starts off at a factor of >1000 you know there is a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale in there somewhere.

The BBC repeated the "600,000 children are killed ‎by air pollution each year" quote.

This story accompanies the long standing call to ban all solid fuels as they cannot be burned cleanly. ‎After all, damp straw burning in a field proves all biomass is dirty fuel, right?

Regards
Crispin

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WHO: 600,000 children died from air pollution in 2016

By Michael Burke, The Hill, Oct 29, 2018

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/413606-who-600000-children-died-from-air-pollution-in-2016<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fthehill.com%2Fpolicy%2Fenergy-environment%2F413606-who-600000-children-died-from-air-pollution-in-2016&data=02%7C01%7C%7C98d5d3c55afd49c264a508d643a3ea38%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636770768612048481&sdata=wkNyyc%2F2kipekYRgNlwMdA9XIKTb6YghsOdaYNr1jCY%3D&reserved=0>

Link to press release: More than 90% of the world’s children breathe toxic air every day

By Staff Writers, WHO, Oct 29, 2018

http://www.who.int/news-room/detail/29-10-2018-more-than-90-of-the-world%E2%80%99s-children-breathe-toxic-air-every-day<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.who.int%2Fnews-room%2Fdetail%2F29-10-2018-more-than-90-of-the-world%25E2%2580%2599s-children-breathe-toxic-air-every-day&data=02%7C01%7C%7C98d5d3c55afd49c264a508d643a3ea38%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636770768612048481&sdata=SVbAA3PKQ6%2Bo49A7T0AXrYvS7FpGQS12L%2BNdKylpX44%3D&reserved=0>

[SEPP Comment: The article features a photo of a power plant emitting steam. In many countries indoor air pollution is a big problem, the photo in The Hill makes it trivial. WHO reports regarding PM2.5 in high-income countries are highly questionable.]


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