To say don't use a wood burner if you have children in the house?

It's opening the door that releases the particulates isn't it? We have it on but often load it up so it goes a couple of hours rather than keep opening and closing the door.

We have an air purifier and the reading rarely go high when we use the burner- whereas it can freak out over burnt toast on a different floor of the house.

I think spray room fresheners are probably worse for kids- half of them are toxic to fish/animals which show how bad they are. I'd also argue that they mention nothing of what the families in studies were burning- massive difference between proper seasoned wood and old fences covered in paint.

I don’t have a wood burner so don’t really care, but I do have an issue with people not full understanding scientific studies and then preaching about it.

do you understand @MojoMoon what particulate matter is? What cleaning products do you use? Do you use perfume? Do you use aerosol deodorant? Do you ever cook anything on the hob?

Oh, sorry, I confusingly mixed two things up - I didn't have a wood-burning stove, I lived in an urban area with shocking air quality and was unaware of it. But my point was that people expect dangerous air pollution to smell/taste/'feel' like bad air, like old-fashioned coal smog does. But modern air pollution isn't like that, and whether it feels unpleasant isn't actually a good test of how clean air is.

My point was that, I think, part of why people won't accept wood burning can be very bad for you is that is feels nice to most people to be in a room with a fire. It doesn't mean it isn't bad for you, but as you can see from the responses here, people resist that on a very deep and instinctive level. I found the same whenever I told other people about the link between air pollution and miscarriage - people just couldn't/wouldn't believe that living in my nice, affluent neighbourhood could have been unhealthy because it didn't 'feel' like an unhealthy place to be.

People get hugely defensive about anything they want to carry on doing when science determines the negative effects.
Think of the huge push back against stopping smoking in public places, and of course more recently with climate change.

Yes exactly. Unless your kid is sat on the roof, mouth wide over the chimney.

I read lots of academic studies and this extrapolation from results alone makes me think it’s biased.

That’s the full particulate matter released. You th chimney.
if people have woodburners without chimneys, allowing all the smoke into the house then yes- it’s like a car in your living room.

Most of those particulates go straight up the chimney.

YABU, and should come clean about your agenda on this.

This is interesting. I’ve moved to a new house with a wood burner that isn’t safe to use so haven’t done so. But was going to replace it with a new one when we’d saved up enough money! Will definitely do some research on this.

Not directly into the living room.

lol what’s your beef with wood burners? Why wood burners, specifically

What a weird retort? You could say that about every thread on MNs 😆

Cooking added to the measured air pollution, especially when the backpacks were left close to the kitchen in the children’s homes. Short pollution peaks were also measured when children walked past bakeries and restaurants on the high street.

YANBU.

I am smashing up by oven as we speak, and no longer allow my children to walk past eateries of any kind.

In fact, I may just seal them in huge Ziplock bags with oxygen tank.

But OMG, the plastic in the bags!! We will move to a boat on the sea instead.

But oh FUCK, the CO2 in the ocean!!
Never mind, we’ll move to the middle of a large field in the country.

Oh but SHIT on it!! The methane from the fucking twatting cows!! This is hard!! Oh but I’ve got it! A nice sterile environment is needed - we’ll move to a hospital.

But oh my giddy aunt, the MRSA.

Fuck it, I’m staying home by the fire.

No because it’s not providing any comfort to the children or anyone else in the household hence is a selfish act so different imo.

lol what’s your beef with wood burners? Why wood burners, specifically?

I’d be more concerned about children living in busy cities with busy roads than I would about a child living in a house who has a wood burner lit a few nights a year

Plenty of city households have wood burners….

We have a wood burner - I love it, and thanks to a tree surgeon uncle it's a lot cheaper for us than heating, so we use it a fair amount in winter. But I did notice that when we had to use it continuously for a week or two this winter while we had our whole heating system replaced, the air inside the house felt not-nice on the lungs similar to when I'd visited a city with very bad air pollution. Kept having to open all windows and doors to refresh it, which defeated the object. We have it serviced, burn seasoned wood etc. So I can definitely - from my own anecdotal perspective - feel the pollution. We don't have kids, though!

Source for “it’s like parking your care in the living room with the engine running”?

Why do wood burning defenders respond so vigorously to studies like this

Because they are fashionable & look nice.

Thank you for sharing this. It's mad anyone uses a wood burner unless they have no other source of heating. It's the same as parking a car in your living room with the engine running. I wish the government would make home owners get a licence for a wood burner, and have to prove there's no alternative.

I didn’t read the entire OP but I think I got the gist. I’m sure that using wood burning open sources of heat all the time, every day, would be damaging to human health but surely a few logs on the fire from time to time can’t be too bad…

By that token we should also close all restaurants and bakeries?

Every family makes its own risk assessments and tolerates its accepted level of risk.
We have a wood burner (with a catalytic converter) and think that the benefit we get from it outweighs the damage it might do.

Each to their own.