To ask how you can justify using a woodburner in a city or town

[MojoMoon]

www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/09/eco-wood-stoves-emit-pollution-hgv-ecodesign?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

New wood burning stoves billed as more environmentally friendly still emit 750 times more tiny particle pollution than a modern HGV truck, a report has shown.

Only stoves that meet the ecodesign standard can be legally sold from the start of 2022 in the UK and EU, but experts said the regulation was shockingly weak.

The report used data on the emissions produced by stoves in perfect laboratory conditions and the pollution could be even higher in everyday use, the researchers said, with older stoves being much worse.

Tiny particle pollution – called PM2.5 – is especially harmful to health as it can pass through the lungs into the bloodstream and then be carried around the body and lodge in organs. At least 40 ,000 early deaths a year are attributed to wood burning in Europe.

Wood burners also triple the level of harmful pollution inside homes and should be sold with a health warning, said the scientist behind a study published in December. The researchers advised that the stoves should not be used around elderly people or children.

The government may have banned the burning of wet wood but has no plans to ban the sale of woodburners, despite the fact that the 8pc of homes that use them are almost entirely in cities and can use power or gas for heating. And are almost entirely fairly wealthy households.

(Those of you who live a "very rural" location, to use a common Mumsnet phrase and are entirely off grid may justifiably need one. But the question was cities and towns).

It worries me so few people know how dangerous PM2.5 emissions are, particularly for pregnant women and children.

YANBU: correct, woodburners should be banned in homes in cities and towns asap

YABU: no, they look pretty and who cares about science and health

@toconclude

All my wood is collected from deadwood and properly seasoned. It's idiots burning green and treated wood who are the problem.

Exactly I lived in the middle of nowhere. No gas. Oil was ridiculous - so yes we burnt everything. Compared the amount spewing out in India and China in factories or the pollution of the rivers by farmers - one wood burner is the least of your problems

We have one. I wouldn’t put one in again because of the things you mention. We only use when very cold and our house is old with lots of drafts. My in laws recently put one in their 1970’s house that is on an estate but they like to pretend is in the country. Totally unnecessary and I eyerolled at that.

[quote ejhhhhh]@BungleandGeorge we're taking steps in the right direction though. More than 50% of our electricity comes from renewable sources, and that's with only modest incentives from the government. If we had a greater investment renewables (we could use some of the subsidies we still give fossil fuels for that), we could do much better. What do you mean by "some eco options are inefficient". How are you measuring efficiency? We may need to accept that if we're going to heat our homes with renewable electricity, we're going to need much more generation, and we might need to accept that nuclear power is a necessary evil, as it would be difficult to generate enough power by other clean means. The French have done it, and plenty of British people are still happy to holiday in France despite the country being choc full of nuclear reactors, so maybe we'd accept that here too.[/quote]
Personally I totally accept that our only viable option is nuclear and that solar, wind, hydroelectric etc are just not going to provide enough for the entire country ( especially to power all the additional cars, heating etc if we’re saying electric is the way of the future). If the OP is in France I understand their stance on electricity being vastly less polluting but it’s certainly not the case in the UK currently. People don’t want nuclear but you can’t have everything, if people want warm homes and easy travel there has to be some trade off, whether that’s air pollution, risk of nuclear or whatever.

I like having a back up incase of power cut.

Oh well, maybe I should cancel the person who's coming to give us a quote to have one installed.

Makes you wonder how humans survived burning wood as a source of heat for hundreds of years. I grew up in an area where everyone had coal fires, yet I'm unaware of anyone suffering health problems as a consequence. I knew of no children who had asthma back then.

If the scientific data states that woodburners are harmful, I am in no position to dispute that. However, the person in the report quoted in the Guardian article works for Green Transition Denmark. According to their website they are funded by Danish and international foundations, authorities and companies. But I don't see any details of who any of them actually are - perhaps they have some vested interest in getting log burners banned. Perhaps energy providers can't make money from people who 'scavenge' for wood. Just a thought.

According to what we are told, there are either health or environmental costs however we decide to heat our homes. I wish we could go back to the old days when all we had to worry about was the hole in the ozone layer that was going to finish us all off....

Ultrafine particles (UFP) are defined as those with one dimension less than 100 nanometres. They are therefore the smallest group of particles in the atmosphere and comprise a minor component of PM2.5 and PM10. However, although their contribution to particle mass is generally very small, they typically contribute the greatest number of particles per unit volume relative to the total number of particles present in the atmosphere.
UFP are both primary (directly emitted into the atmosphere from sources such as road traffic and coal combustion) and secondary (formed from chemical reactions in the atmosphere). Because of their very small size, UFP typically undergo rapid dynamic transformations in the atmosphere due to processes such as coagulation, condensational growth, evaporation and deposition. The concentrations therefore vary greatly in time and space, especially close to sources of emission.
UFP are believed to contribute to the toxicity of airborne particulate matter but the magnitude of their contribution is currently unclear. Whilst it is possible that their small size and large surface area may make them particularly harmful to health, the available evidence is limited and as yet no air quality guideline has been set for their concentration.
Emissions of UFP arise primarily from combustion sources and especially transport-related sources which burn sulphur-containing fuels. Emissions from road transport affect all areas with major roads, emissions from shipping are important on the main shipping routes, and emissions from aviation are significant in the vicinity of major airports. Some possibly important sources such as domestic wood burning are currently poorly quantified.
Secondary UFP which arise from new particle formation within the atmosphere are very important in southern Europe but less so in the UK. Regional nucleation processes are believed to account for around 10% on average of the particle count at a background site in London.

Very interesting from an actual defra report.

It is interesting because I had focussed on the co2 element and felt comfortable with that but didnt really know about these pm things. I live in some of the worst air quality in the country and its very much bern pinned on a particular road causing it.

What about bio-ethanol stoves? Are they dangerous too?

@RoisinD
But not without high levels of particulate emissions, apparently. woodsmokepollution.org/pellet-stoves.html

Which is the issue in question.

We live in a rural area in an old, draughty house. When we moved in there was ancient oil heating (no gas available) and two open fires in use - we replaced these with a ground source heat pump and two wood burners (that are much more efficient than the open fires were). We need the wood burners in case of power cuts, which we used to have fairly regularly, but they are now much more regular since the built hundreds of ugly little boxes in the nearby village without upgrading the substation. We only use seasoned hardwoods and always keep the door closed - they are so efficient we only need to empty the ash every month. There is no excuse for them in towns though with reliable power supplies.

@Dontgetyerknicksinatwist

The emissions from wood burning stoves will be a drop in the ocean compared to the pollution generated by China and India. Until they get their act together I honestly feel like any efforts we make are pointless. And if gas prices continue to rise I will be getting one.

It’s not about emissions. It’s about LOCAL air quality. Whatever China et al burns stays over there, generally, and doesn’t cause acute health issues like heart conditions, respiratory illnesses, asthma ….

[quote ejhhhhh]@TatianaBis you probably should be more concerned about wood burners if you live in London. They account for a surprisingly high % of local air pollution, almost as much as traffic. The particulates from wood combined with fumes from traffic are very harmful, we need to reduce both.[/quote]
I really don’t care sorry. Vehicle pollution is much more of an issue.

I have a wood burner, in my old and draughty Victorian cottage in a village. I have no double glazing on my old windows, and have damp in some walls. I have observed from outside, that the chimney does not throw out all that much smoke and particles, when the burner is functioning, and not like the smoke from coal fires, like the ones that I grew up with, in the 1940/50's eras, the ones that created a smog atmosphere all over the areas in the Winter months.

My three cats, are very fond of gathering around the wood burner area on Winters evenings. !!

@Elephantsparade we insulated our walls internally using insulating plasterboard. It was the most cost effective method at the time we were looking, and I think it does make a significant difference. It does mean the walls need a skim, new skirtings and redecoration afterwards, but if you're redecorating anyway I'd look into it.

Well if gas prices keep rising some people won’t have a choice…

@PickleASturgeon being unaware of air pollution is very different to it not existing. If course poor air pollution had a massive impact on health when burning coal was widespread. If you were unaware of this you can look it up fairly easily. Google will be sufficient.

@ejhhhhh thank you. I will look into it. Do you just do the external walls?

That should have read "poor air quality had a massive effect on health when burning coal was widespread".

@Elephantsparade we did yes, the installer said there'd be little point in doing the internal ones. It means we don't get damp on the walls behind furniture next to externals walls too, which was a massive issue before.

@PickleASturgeon
Yes, if you care about your own health, the health of your family and your neighbours.

If you are worried about the study, you can see similar conclusions from work by Dr Gary Fuller at Imperial College (who is the UKRI clean air champion) and Dr Rohit Chakrabarty at Sheffield Uni.

Dr Fuller's book Invisible Killer: The Rising Global Threat of Air Pollution - and How We Can Fight Back is well worth reading before you go ahead with a stove.

By the 20th century - at least - respiratory diseases were the UK's biggest killers [the death-rate from bronchitis in the UK remained the highest in the world in the early 1950s, 65 per 100,000 in England and Wales, more than twice than of the nearest other country, Belgium].[26][21]

From defra

Particulate Matter (PM) is everything in the air that is not a gas and as such it is made up from a huge variety of chemical compounds and materials some which can be toxic.

@FourTeaFallOut

I have two log burning hygge bastards on my street. The street is thick with smoke on foggy days and it makes me wheeze and I can't open the windows. Cunts.

Wow.

Anyway. The statistics simply don’t make sense to me. I might actually write to more or less.

Pm2. Includes cat hair and bleach to name a few of thousands.

Yeah, wow. I'm regularly hospitalised with asthma in the winter, but yeah, mean words.