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

[Nikhil Desai]

Andrew:

Re: " Nikhil's quest for contextual evidence of cooking originated
household air pollution."

Not trying to be difficult for the sake of being difficult, but I feel
misunderstood. As with WBT and "efficiency", my primary complaint is with
metrics, methods secondarily.

I don't think "contextual evidence" is necessary, except for WHO types who
want to cook up numbers and set regulatory standards. Over the last 150
years or so, the "cleaner combustion" revolution inside buildings and
factories did not depend on fancy measurements and publication record in
peer-reviewed journals. Nor on computing burdens of diseases.

The reason I tried to define "clean cookstoves" or "cleaner combustion
technologies" in terms of local standards and the potential for
"significant improvement in air quality" is that I am assuming that such
improvements in air quality are in turn a "better life". (The Barnes, et
al. book title "Cleaner Hearths, Better Homes" said it all.)

The definition is usable at the home, neighborhood, city, count levels.
What is needed is not just measurement at selected periods but air basin
modeling to the extent that data permit and enforcement of an air quality
improvement plan requires.

Remember Europe and North America of 1960s. Particulate control wasn't yet
practical, so ventilation was the main instrument. Earlier, "cleaner
combustion" was already under way for a hundred years, in homes and outside.

Is it too mischievous or impudent to ask that Nobel laureates use common
sense and reality checks, getting  their heads out of fireboxes and box
modeling, asking "What does the cook want and how would she use it?"

Yes, metrics, methods, and the whole supply chain of production and
delivery of fuels, devices, services, are necessary, but first comes a
usable stove, not additions to lists of publications.

I happen to have visited Anil once in his office and facilities at NARI. I
have observed stove projects in action and helped mobilize multilateral
grant financing for them. There is something called "too much science",
when the "mainstream" authorities issue "fake news". Supporters of Hillary
have been using Trumpian methods.

Nikhil




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


On Sat, Sep 8, 2018 at 8:12 AM, Andrew Heggie <aj.heggie at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 8 Sep 2018 at 03:01, nari phaltan <nariphaltan at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Dear Norbert,
> >
> > This small paper of ours on soot measurement might be of interest to
> you. The work was done in 2012 and we had sent this to Tami. She liked the
> simplicity of the work. We never published this.
> >
> > nariphaltan.org/sootpaper.pdf
> >
>
> Simple  and cheap system Anil, I wonder if this meets Nikhil's quest
> for contextual evidence of cooking originated household air pollution.
>
> I have a simple laser detector from a seller on alibarba which cost me
> about USD20 which log using a simple python script. It would be
> interesting to sit this adjacent to your sooty plates and see the
> results as your method integrates the  data to give a total loading.
>
> Andrew
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