[Stoves] The Economist: Wood-burning stoves, the picturesque polluters

[Andrew Heggie]

On Mon, 3 Sep 2018 at 23:20, Nikhil Desai <pienergy2008 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Re:  "also eliminate other sources in the local environment."
>
> a) Some of it is natural; b) if you drop the equitoxicity assumption, these % shares are irrelevant. Maybe it is more important to drop BC from diesel than to shut down wood stoves for home heating.

Firstly as I said it is not relevant to those who have to cook with
wood,  there are alternatives available in UK and the contribution to
the cost of heat overall is negligible compared with the effect in an
already polluted urban area, others are not so fortunate.

I have on board that all particulates are not equally as damaging but
so far have no reason to believe particulates from wood smoke are any
less damaging than those from diesel exhausts.
>
> Remember, in the Kirk Smith worldview, it is only the PM2.5 from solid fuels that HAP premature deaths are attributed to.

Yes because it is Household Air Pollution he is considering not
ambient air next to a highway.
>
> That there is no observed quantity and duration of exposures to just HAP PM2.5 is one issue with GBD "estimates". But more fundamentally, how can one eliminate non-fuel PM2.5 - not just from tobacco smoke, a known carcinogen, but also all the emissions from foods, livestock management, "natural" dust - and even PM5 and PM10, which includes pollen and such - and achieve a target reduction in "dosage"?

Part of the "natural" dust is Aspergillus spores from the fungal
breakdown of biomass and these are cited as causing lung disorders and
this was part of my point, eliminating any one of the sources is never
going to eliminate the problem.


<snip>

The only objective of a clean cookstove - like any other combustion
device with organic fuels - is a significant improve in air quality,
toward some contextually defined levels.


I agree but  getting to know  the "contextually defined levels" seems
to be a problem

Andrew