[Stoves] Off-topic Re: New PM2.5 health impact analysis

[Nikhil Desai]

Norbert:

This is not an impact analysis. It is only revision of estimates with new
models. New assumptions, no measurements. Impact is what can be sold for
more grants.

Page 2 notes the limitations of strong assumptions behind the Integrated
Energy Response (IER) that was used in cooking up HAP GBD.

That is good. While they call it "strong assumptions", I call them deceit.
That is a matter of opinion, not facts or falsifiability. Kirk Smith had
cautioned us on assumptions behind IER and, more importantly, the fake
"daily average concentration" applied to the entire "premature dead" (by a
day or by more than eight decades) population (some 500 million to 800
million, having lived about 1 trillion person-days, cumulative from 1990 to
2016).

So, Burnett et al. now (this piece) innovate on Burnett et al. (2014) that
I have commented on previously, and cook up "new, improved, fortified,
citations-enriched, ultra-modern" cake of deaths. No DALYs here; that's the
IHME icing.

They have a finding supporting the air pollution hysterics - " Specifically
the global estimates of mortality attributable to ambient fine particulate
air pollution (8.9 million, 95% CI: 7.5–10.3) were *120% higher than
previous estimates and suggest comparable impact to the leading global
mortality risk factors of diet* (10.3 million deaths, 95% CI: 8.8–11.9) and
cigarette smoking (6.3 million deaths; 95% CI: 5.7–7.0) (1). "

To repeat the broken record, "attributable" does not mean "caused by", and
attribution of past deaths has no applicability to the currently alive in
terms of "avoidability".

But the basic question remains -- what are the underlying data on exposures
and disease incidence behind these "global estimates"?

Here is something of an answer - global population health is not
constructed from national and sub-national statistics on disease and death,
or for that matter diet, smoking, pollution exposure, or alcohol. (Read
this item on NYTimes.com last week - Study Causes Splash, but Here’s Why
You Should Stay Calm on Alcohol’s Risks
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/28/upshot/alcohol-health-risks-study-worry.html>,
Aaron Carroll 28th August 2018).

Analogously, I suggest we all stay calm on air pollution risks. GBD is a
product of ignorance -- the idea being something like "back of the
envelope" calculations engineers and economists do all the time, from
guessing power sector investment requirements and then checking them
against models with numerous untenable assumptions, then assessing the
risks of decisions.

If you read the Lancet paper on GBD from alcohol (23 August 2018, cited in
the NYTimes opinion piece I gave a link to), you would notice the authors
suggesting that given the global findings, more work is required at the
national level.

This is like Trump declaring trade war or denuclearization of the Korean
Peninsula -- shoot first, ask questions later. But this is inherent to the
IHME approach -- make a splash, throw mud or better still, just drive all
sensible people away, and use the media.

On HAP, there are captive think-tanks like HEI or flake projects like GACC
- who sponsor papers by Prof. Smith's ex-students and fellow aDALY
marketers.

Have a drink. On me. No smoke. (Under the assumptions of this study, Risk
is instantaneous to exposure. Time profile does not matter. I have to read
the Supplemental Information, and check again.)

This piece rather soberly says,

"..this approach suggests that the health benefits of reducing PM2.5 are
likely much larger than previously assumed, owing to much stronger
relationships between air pollution and mortality at higher concentrations.
The implications of this finding are particularly significant for countries
with the highest air-pollution concentrations, as the potential health
benefits of air-quality improvements in these areas are larger than
previously recognized."


Yeah, right. I will have to post a blog item from the World Bank on the
spurious national AAP pollution estimates of the kind marketed by IHME and
fellow glee club of the glib. I will also have to check whether this
finding of "much stronger relationships.. at higher concentrations" runs
counter to the Kirk Smith and Jennifer Peel 2010 paper that it is better to
lower the AAP concentrations when they are low, compared to reducing active
smoking, say. (Counter-intuitive, as they admitted themselves. But that was
the pre-IER, i.e., pre-Burnett, world.)

There are many ways of reducing air-pollution concentrations and, more
importantly, exposures. The OECD history of air quality management (unlike
these models) suggests to me that cleaner combustion of solid fuels,
particularly in modern coal-fired power plants, and better management of
existing devices (vehicle and industrial engines), goes a long way in
reducing emissions, and better homes and built habitats similarly go a long
way in reducing concentrations and exposures.

The dead will be with us, so to speak, as also dead wood like these
modelers of global health.

Nikhil




------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nikhil Desai
(US +1) 202 568 5831
*Skype: nikhildesai888*


On Wed, Sep 5, 2018 at 12:08 PM, Norbert Senf <norbert.senf at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Interesting paper published yesterday in PNAS:
> "Global estimates of mortality associated with long-term exposure to
> outdoor fine particulate matter"
>
> It appears to be a fairly comprehensive analysis using newer, more robust
> statistical methods and to be a rather large panel of health and
> atmospheric sciences experts:
>
> http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/08/28/1803222115
>
> --
> Norbert Senf
> Masonry Stove Builders
> 25 Brouse Road, RR 5
> Shawville Québec J0X 2Y0
> 819.647.5092
> www.heatkit.com
>
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