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

I have one, I paid a premium for an "eco" one before it was mandatory, and thought I was making a good choice for the environment. The particle emissions concern me, and as a result, we now only use when it's really cold in the evening. I feel a bit mis-sold tbh.

@BungleandGeorge electricity is vastly less polluting than burning wood because we're talking about particulate pollution not CO2 emissions. And burning wood still produces CO2 emissions. Generating electricity produces very little particulate pollution because we no longer have a working power station burning coal, and even if we did, they're not in urban areas where it's that much of an issue (although I'm sure if you lived next door to one it would be a concern). Most electricity comes from burning gas, which does not produce particulate pollution.

There was one in our house when we moved in. We have rarely used it aside from when we had issues with our heating and then we used coffee logs. Not perfect but not too bad.

If we had a very cold winter and our heating bills became an issue I would use it more, again with the coffee logs

Yanbu OP, I'm astonished that wood burners are still legal given that diesel and petrol cars soon won't be. And that there's still so much ignorance about them.

PM is a very interesting thing to read about.
I get the impression it’s more about the quality of what it is made up of rather than the quantity.

Which is something that could easily be solved and people could still keep wood burners.

@dailily

I have one, I paid a premium for an "eco" one before it was mandatory, and thought I was making a good choice for the environment. The particle emissions concern me, and as a result, we now only use when it's really cold in the evening. I feel a bit mis-sold tbh.

Me too. There was such a focus on how we could buy sustainable wood and how hot it burned. We got an eco one with smokeless fuel but it seems a bit on a con

YABU, from experience, yes i do not know the specifics about the health effects, although on a windy day id presume there would be very little particles that would buildup as they would scatter across a wide area,then second point is if, they are connected to a water heater and radiators, then if you can get cheap or scrap wood and logs , then id presume a lot cheaper than the energy company prices.

I have two wood burners. I only use properly seasoned wood. I’m rural and there’s often a power cut in the winter and then they are fab. Heat, light, you can heat some food up or water to wash. I don’t know how we’d of managed with young children in a house with no heating without them. Power cut is very much an annual thing here.

Gas prices ...and I'm chronically asthmatic but I'm not affected by woodsmoke...traffic and aircraft fumes are another matter

Funny how I feel the need to NC in order to say that I have far bigger things to worry about than woodburners.

I installed one in my previous house, and would have done it in the house I live in now without a single second's thought - but don't need to as I have an open fire and an Aga. I live in a town. I burn all sorts on the open fire - basically anything that will burn.

Who has power cuts in the U.K. I genuinely didn’t think that was a thing.
Are you all extremely rural. I grew up rurally but we didn’t have power cuts?!
Excuse my ignorance

All the people I know with wood burners are travellers living in vehicles/trailers! Not exactly the wealthy

Me too. There was such a focus on how we could buy sustainable wood and how hot it burned. We got an eco one with smokeless fuel but it seems a bit on a con

It’s the monomania around carbon emissions. People forget about actual air pollution that actually kills people.

@Loveshelly

Who has power cuts in the U.K. I genuinely didn’t think that was a thing. Are you all extremely rural. I grew up rurally but we didn’t have power cuts?! Excuse my ignorance

My mum regularly has power cuts in a part of suburban Hampshire. She lives in an old cottage, old infrastructure, no Gas supply to the locality, relies on oil to heat her home and experiences outages fairly regularly.

If people only used them when there was a power cut there'd be no issue. I highly doubt that's the case.

Ours heats our hot water..so it also does the radiators upstairs. We have a lot of power cute too so it's light. We're very rural

I live in an old very cold house with no gas. If I were to rely on heating with only electric our bills would be approx £300 per month (£3600 a year)

By using a log burner and seasoned hard wood (£300) I can halve my electric bill.

Funny how I feel the need to NC in order to say that I have far bigger things to worry about than woodburners.

Woodburners are contributing to the premature deaths of many people each year, including children. What do you have to worry about that's more important than the deaths of children?

Given the price of gas this year I think people will be using them more this year.

We use ours at the weekend when we are in all day instead of putting the heating on. We use seasoned dry logs and Eco coal.

It’s an interesting idea where the whole process should be looked at from start to finish not just the burning of. The logs come from tree surgeons who supplement their income by selling them, or managed forests.
Whilst we all need to leave more wood to decay, be eaten by creatures and become homes for them. The sheer volume would need dealing with in some way.

@Loveshelly

Who has power cuts in the U.K. I genuinely didn’t think that was a thing. Are you all extremely rural. I grew up rurally but we didn’t have power cuts?! Excuse my ignorance

I am in a small town in a rural part of the country. It seems to happen most often due to work being done rather than storms etc. Gas was off for a week once after I found a gas leak at the entrance to my property and nobody could agree whose responsibility it was to mend.

I don't really get the reluctance to stop doing something that kills people "just because", with no valid reason (so I'm not talking about people who genuinely need to burn solid fuel). There's loads of things we don't do because it kills people. We don't allow people to drive around town half cut for a start. How's this any different?

Totally fed up of the green washing. The biomass electricity plants create a huge amount of C02 but are labelled as "green". They are not as a study of the process will quickly reveal. The Guardian ran an article a few days ago but there are plenty more out there.

In some areas of the country coal is still a primary form of heating - it used to be part of the miners pensions. Free coal for life. The banning of fossil fuels will hit a lot of them hard. Many have no other option for heating other than oil or electricity, both of which are expensive.

Heat pumps? A complete non starter for most of the UKs housing stock

Those who worry about air quality and their children - do you also avoid scented candles, cleaning products, plug in air fresheners etc? Even new fabrics emit unpleasant irritant chemicals. Air qaulity within homes is frequently very poor.

Those who worry about air quality and their children - do you also avoid scented candles, cleaning products, plug in air fresheners etc? Even new fabrics emit unpleasant irritant chemicals.

Yes.

Bollocks are they almost entirely wealthy households. You include one Guardian article (your source in the OP) but NOT the Guardian article it got its information from.

When they say 8% use wood burners and “many are affluent and don’t need the heat,” turns out that “many” is… half. Half. So half of the people wood burning are NOT affluent and ARE using it for heat. Yes, they may have another heat source but not be able to afford the gas. Honestly, when an OP opens by talking total shite…
OP direct quote: And are almost entirely fairly wealthy households.
Source that only HALF are affluent:
www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/16/home-wood-burning-biggest-cause-particle-pollution-fires

And I do so love MN disagreeing with itself. So much distrust of the government on Monday and give up your wood burners by Saturday. So… they were already cutting power in winter sporadically, and you think that’s going to IMPROVE?

Everyone I know who has one is middle-class and has it essentially for fun. Including some who think they are environmentally friendly. They need to be banned for any house at least on gas mains.