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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;mso-fareast-language:EN-US">Dear Nikhil<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;mso-fareast-language:EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">></span></b>I take it you are setting for me an example of sane, measured, respectful analysis of the "stoves and health" claims and counterclaims. <br>
<br>
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">I can’t set you up – you have been there for years without any intro from me.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br>
>I tried to explain the phoniness of WHO "solid fuels use" database or "emissions database".
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">There are serious problems with this matter going back to before the IWA meeting. There were foundational errors that I think the students involved, at the time, did not realise
were errors. They had been led down the garden path a bit by earlier, widely repeated and improper claims that ‘fuels have emissions’, that there were ‘clean fuels and dirty fuels’, that fuels had ‘a combustion efficiency’ and that the GBD meant something
about an individual’s health risk.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">This last error is what drives the whole nonsense about declaring an individual stove user’s life expectancy to be lengthened a little by switching to a cleaner stove, or even
longer by switching to LPG. That is a linearity in that claim: less smoke guarantees a longer life. That is the essence of the claim.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Maybe it is true. It is not provable for every individual. Maybe it doesn’t have to be. What is provably false is the claim that a GBD ‘number’ can be turned into a codified
risk reduction and life extension for a particular intervention. There is a mania sweeping the funding community hoping to “monetize DALY’s”. That would require calculating the averted DALY’s and assessing a value on each averted disability adjusted life
year. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Monetizing DALY’s requires firmly tying smoke exposure to specific diseases or sets of diseases. These had been assume before. Trying to nail it down to specifics requires
large scale medical observations. That is, as you pointed out earlier, quite different from guessing that smoke aggravates asthma or turns a cold into pneumonia.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">>(I did review their Reviews, and started writing, but sometimes couldn't stop laughing, and sometimes got too irritated to continue.) I also tried to explain the phoniness of EPA's PM2.5 approach - the assumption of equitoxicity in particular.
I then laid out the case against use of IER to invent "relative risk" estimates. <br>
<br>
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">The problems/dysfunctions of IER’s are well documented, perhaps not well known. There is a lot of guessing buried inside. In the back corridors both IER’s and DALY’s are laughed
at, meaning, not believed to be ‘real’. That doesn’t mean people won’t take them seriously, but I don’t think there is much belief they represent something real.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br>
>And abuse of all such fiction, passing the pseudo-science off as an advance. <br>
<br>
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Well, there is the question: do those doing the ‘passing off’ believe they are real or not? If it can be dressed up a bit, will money flow?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br>
>But that - in the eyes of Ron - is sacrilege. Rant. Animosity. <br>
<br>
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">He made his opinion very clear. He did not however present any evidence or opinion that there is something real, valid, substantial, factual, supporting the idea that there
is a clear link between stove smoke and specific diseases or the shortening of lives by calculable amounts.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">>Ron has enjoyed the luxuries of stove science while some 400 million poor people have died prematurely in the last 30 years.<br>
<br>
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">They did, according to the standard definition (apparently now popular) that all people should have lived to be 86 and that anyone who dies before that dies ‘prematurely’.
Causes for that prematurity have been assigned, and PM2.5 is one of the ‘causes’ assigned its due proportion.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br>
>The poor must not have any great expectations. <br>
<br>
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">If they look over the list of how they are supposedly dying, I think their reaction will be great expectorations.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br>
>I am happy to be a heretic. How can you not be one? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Sorry, there is nothing heretical about your position. Scientific assessments and methods are canonical. The heretics are those who eschew them. The modeling of exposure in
kitchens (which is available on line – you can download the WHO committee notes) is downright humorous. I say that because when I describe it to experts they all laugh.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">Regards<br>
Crispin<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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