[Stoves] WHO and 600,000 dead children

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Andrew

>> A typical cigarette creates about 40 to 45 milligrams of PM2.5 (45,000 µg).  Sources very but the references I found were 40 to 45, with the latter being more common. So the cigarette-equivalence of that air (assuming they do not step indoors where air is probably cleaner than outside) is 1600/45,000 = 0.03555 cigarettes or 1/28.125. For a 60mm cigarette that would be 2.13mm of tobacco.

>Again that looks good but I was looking for an attribution of the measurements

Measurements of the air quality? Multiple stations per city. The current International standard is to have at least 10.  Ulaanbaatar has 13.

> I wonder if this is the result of reporting the wrong units (as I recently did with my little laser particulate counter) and subsequent poor communication[1] and rounding as it is about the same 1000 fold error that would result from confusing milligrams with micrograms.

That is clearly a possibility. It could be that no one involved has a clue what they are talking about within three orders of magnitude.

>I hear you but as it stands in my understanding I think PM 2.5 from combustion, whether it be engine exhaust, cigarette smoke or biomass combustion is probably  similarly bad.

This is clearly not the case. Silicosis, black lung, asbestosis, wood smoke from a clean fire v.s. wood smouldering in a field are very different in their effects.  If the person inhaling the substance has a good diet, medical care and inoculation history, the effect is different too. That is why so much detailed data is needed to make any useful attribution at all. 

>We have a saying in UK that is no longer politically correct and it derives from a game where one has to whisper a short sentence to your neighbour without anyone else hearing, and the recipient then whispers it to the next person and so on, the last person then says the message out loud for the originator to see how it has been contorted.

Yeah: "Ethnic Whispers". Right?

We used to play that in Grade 2. What started out as a sentence ended up as, "Mummy."

Regards
Crispin