[Stoves] The Economist

Fri Sep 7 15:05:36 CDT 2018

Crispin:

I am glad I quit my decades-long addiction to the Economist. With
economists like these, who needs zealots of environmental health?

I had begun a thread on this article a few days ago, mentioning the
proposal to tax $1,150 per wood stove per year in "inner London."

If UK had a legal system similar to that in the US, I would say, "Bring it
on!!" I would challenge the Mayor of London or the UK government to produce
air circulation models taking wood stove ventilation at particular times a
day, month and year, to produce evidence of incremental ingestion of
chemicals causally linked to a particular disease profile, and justify the
tax in terms of avoided public health care costs. (If there are private
costs of ingestion, I would be prepared to fight a tort case.)

I am not saying pollutants don't affect health; rather, that in fact is the
definition of pollution. It is ridiculous to equate emissions to pollution,
as the graph copied below from the Economist supposedly implies.

Even taking the graph as a beginning point of argument - there is no
pollution without emission, after all, whether from natural sources or fuel
combustion, two questions arise: a) Which emissions affect whom? (London
wood heating stoves versus road transport versus "other"), and b) how does
the proposed tax cover just the right amount of externalized costs,
compared to other means of controlling emissions, concentrations, and
ingestion, or for that matter, treating the purported disease?

I tried to find the BMJ "article" arguing for the $1,150/yr/stove tax on
the basis of "polluter pays", neglecting the temerity of such claims. (The
real-life application of "polluter pays" is rare; it is a fashionable
hoity-toity phrase among self-styled planners of the world.)
>From what I can tell, there was no "article", just an editorial opinion -
at Air pollution almost as bad as everyone smoking a cigarette a day
<https://www.bmj.com/content/360/bmj.k167/rr-3> BMJ 2018; 360 doi:
https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k167 (Published 24 January 2018)
This irrational exuberance - say, health hysteria - is based on dubious
economics, BUT the claims on science cannot be dismissed easily. What if
all of the following claims are valid?

"That leaves air pollution, which is much deadlier than previously
thought[3]. In Launceston, Tasmania, wintertime deaths from respiratory
disease fell by 28% and cardiovascular disease by 20% when woodsmoke
pollution was reduced by 17 ug/m3 PM2.5 in winter. Year round, for men, the
reductions were 23% (respiratory) and 18% (cardiovascular)[4].

In Canada, deaths from ischemic heart disease increased by 30% when annual
PM2.5 exposure increased by just 10 ug/m3[5]. The increase in hospital
admissions for heart attacks in another Canadian study was greatest when
the particles came from winter wood heating. On such days, a 10 ug/m3
increase 3-day mean PM2.5 increased hospital admissions for heart attacks
by 38% in those aged 65+[6]. In Hong Kong, a 10 ug/m3 increase annual PM2.5
exposure increased the risk of cancer by 22%, including a 42% increase for
upper digestive tract cancers and 80% for breast caners in women[7].

Population exposure of 10 ug/m3 PM2.5 above background could therefore
cause twice the health damage of current UK smoking levels. The damage from
London’s average of 13.7 ug/m3 PM2.5 above background[8] is expected to be
even worse. London had extraordinary levels of health-hazardous pollution -
3-day mean PM2.5 of 78 ug/m3 in Kensington and 74 ug/m3 at the Sir John
Cass School- on 22-24 January 2017, when about half the pollution was
attributed to domestic wood burning[9].

Many people do not realize that the UK’s largest single source of PM2.5 -
37,200 tonnes - is domestic wood burning, representing 2.7 times the 13,900
tonnes emitted by road transport[10]. An eco-labelled wood stove is allowed
to pollute as much as 25 ten-year-old diesel trucks. When measured under
ideal conditions (good air intake and small pieces of dry wood), real-life
emissions of an eco-labelled wood stove were 600 times worse than a small
diesel truck[11]. Despite this, Defra’s consultation on domestic burning
(open until 27/2/2018) “is not seeking to prevent” the use or installation
of new stoves, simply “encourage consumers to switch to cleaner wood
burning”[12].

Such strategies have not worked in other countries. Despite extremely
strict regulations, and substantial public education on how to burn
cleanly, real-life emissions of 5 stoves in Christchurch, NZ, averaged 9.7
g/kg, 12 times worse than the lab test results averaging 0.82 g/kg[13].

Despite the mild climate in Sydney, Australia, the average new wood stove
emits more PM2.5 per year than 1,000 petrol cars. Only 5% of households use
wood as the main form of heating, yet chemical fingerprinting of
particulate pollution showed that 25% of Sydney’s premature deaths from air
pollution were from domestic wood heating. Estimated health costs amount to
thousands of dollars per stove per year[14].

A New Scientist review in 2017 concluded that “log-burning stoves are
harming our health and speeding up global warming”. As well as strokes and
heart attacks, the mixture of PM2.5 and toxic chemicals emitted by wood
stoves increases the risk of lung diseases, cancers, cot deaths, asthma,
Alzheimer's, genetic damage in babies and reduced IQ, anxiety and attention
deficit when children start school[15]."

My objection to Kirk Smith/IHME/WHO HAP GBD work is two-fold: i) There is
no there there (meaning, no measurements, nor a tested theory) AND ii)
illegitimate policy opinions about "truly health protective", "no
stacking":, etc.

By contrast, the BMJ editorial claims real evidence of deaths by cause
(Tasmania, Canada). I am prepared to read and if necessary debunk this
purported "evidence" (mono-causality, PM2.5 equitoxicity,
cohort-specificity), but you can tell that the British medical
establishment - Lancet or BMJ - is ready, able, and willing to shut down
wood stoves by fiat.

As usual, damn the poor. After all, this is the Economist.

The Economist sometimes finances Lancet projects. I am aware of the Lancet
Commission on Planetary Health, and perhaps also the Lancet Commission on
Health Finance.

The UK NHS has bought into the GBD method while the US NIH has not. Not
that it means all that much in actual decision-making; recall the
philosophy article I shared here on social dis-value of premature death.

The core intellectual issue is the assumption of PM2.5 equitoxicity. PM2.5
concentration is only an INDICATOR of pollution, it is not pollution per
se, which is a matter of specific chemical composition and of course, of
ingestion.

IEA Coal, which grew out of UKAEA I believe, has remarkable work on cleaner
combustion and related siting, controls, etc. for coal-fired power plants.
There is no reason that similar technological advancement of the last 80
years or so cannot be applied for small-scale residential, commercial, and
industrial uses.

The ideological issue is the public belief that things do not and cannot
change. and must not be allowed to change; to wit, coal is a dirty fuel.

The only way USEPA got around to justifying its NSPS for residential wood
heaters, or the Clean Power Plan order of Obama, or for that matter the
MATS rule for coal-fired power plants, is by computing "avoided premature
deaths". (aDALYs are not yet accepted in US regulatory decision-making as
far as I know. EPA and Kirk Smith were too ready to dump intellectual
deceit on poor countries and particularly poorer people.)

Nikhil

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

On Fri, Sep 7, 2018 at 12:33 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

> Dear Friends
>
> This article was linked from the Alliance for Green Heat to the Economist:
>
> https://www.economist.com/britain/2018/08/25/wood-burning-
> stoves-the-picturesque-polluters
>
> The last line is interesting:
>
> "The black smoke will continue to waft from the chimneys of well-to-do
> homes until wood-burners go back out of fashion."
>
> It is this type of ignorance about what smoke is, what products are
> available on the market and what "fashion" means that produces such a
> comment. The author apparently believes that wood "contains smoke".
>
> Because of the massive rise in the cost of heating a home (due to
> misbegotten energy policies) many people are installing a wood burning
> stove. That is not a "fashion" it is survival.  The fuel is attacked as the
> problem, not the poorly designed stoves.
>
> Anyone want to write an article for the Economist?
>
> Regards
> Crispin
>
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