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

@HeronLanyon

dream that’s interesting. So the default is ‘no burn days’ ? Guessing this is as much to do with fire risk as anything else ?

@HeronLanyon

Oh gosh, Heron - We were high up in the Sierras a couple of weeks ago at a friend’s cabin and the National Park Service all of a sudden came and we were evacuated - so scary. The KNP Fire was some distance away but another fire had broken out near us so we had to run. It’s okay now, though. However, many Giant Sequoias have been lost and that’s tragic. Heartbreaking.

The “no burn days” are mainly for air quality and pollution. The agricultural burning this time of year is usually out in the middle of empty fields and consists of old vines or fruit trees that the farmers have pulled out some time ago and pushed into large piles — the smoke is quite terrible, but it’s also far out in the country.
We live in the San Joaquin Valley, which provides the USA an enormous amount of its fruit and vegetables and cotton, etc.

@BluebellsGreenbells

I have one and installed it due to power cuts and out boiler broke one Christmas and I will never suffer minus temperatures over winter again!

Our hose has a lot of insulation and the fire is lit occasionally when extremely cold -

I don’t need to justify it

Yes again people are penalized not businesses

Your last sentence - exactly.

Aim your environmental anger at the companies producing pollution and ruining the air quality far more than a few wood burners. Stopping all the wood burners in the world being used would produce a very small effect on climate change. Focus On on the big guns, not the small ones.

Stopping all the wood burners in the world being used would produce a very small effect on climate change.

It’s about air quality, not climate change.

We have a multifuel burner. I won't lie, it is pretty, but we have it for practical purposes! Already this year our gas bill has gone through the roof and we probably won't be able to afford to turn the heating much extra this winter, so we will rely heavily on our burner as a 'free' way to heat the house, day and night.

I wish there were some magical solution to heating our house that wasn't going to harm the environment or stop us paying the mortgage but this is where we are currently!

@FreedomFaith

It's about local air pollution NOT climate change

It's the particulates damaging your health, the health of anyone in your home and your neighbours. Particulates stay in your local area. Burning wood in China doesn't make a difference to your local air quality and vice versa.

It has nothing to do with climate change or the actions of Big Guns or whatever.

(Climate change is still very important and we need to make radical changes but it's a different issue)

@JassyRadlett

Stopping all the wood burners in the world being used would produce a very small effect on climate change.

It’s about air quality, not climate change.

Potatoes, Potatoes......

The 2 aren't a million miles apart!

Individuals are easier targets than businesses and always will be.....

I wonder how power station affect the air quality of their neighbors?

It's quite fascinating that a lot of people say "well, the environment is damaged by lots of things so what does this matter" but seem to miss the point that particulates, particularly PM2.5, damage your health, the health of your children and family and neighbours.

It's more like CIGARETTE SMOKING (albeit smoking so much that it gets into your neighbours house too) than CLIMATE CHANGE.

Asthma, respiratory disease, miscarriage, dementia

www.mumsforlungs.org/our-campaigns/wood-burning

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29897947/
Results: The emission of PM2.5 from local residential wood burning was associated with dementia incidence with a hazard ratio of 1.55 for a 1 μg/m3 increase in PM2.5 (95% Confidence Interval (CI): 1.00-2.41, p-value 0.05). Study participants with an address in an area with the highest quartile of PM2.5 from residential wood burning and who also had a wood-burning stove were more likely to develop dementia than those in the lower three quartiles without a wood-burning stove with hazard ratios of 1.74 (CI: 1.10-2.75, p-value 0.018).

dream what drama ! I have family in Carmel and Santa Barbara so have been keeping up very vaguely with California happenings.
Here we are a little less organised - farmers stubble burning has guidance but our own garden fires (most right on top of neighbours are only regulated by loose local authority guidance). Even this year which was very dry March-may and other very dry spells it was only ever guidance about no ipen fires despite tinder dry conditions some places.
Always as well as fear for humans it’s always heartbreaking to think of the flora and fauna affected.
Stay well !

@Loveshelly

What’s going to happen now. No more open fires in pubs. This is all fucking bullshit. They’re really for aesthetic reasons these days, on in winter only. Not pumping out 24hours a day in slums. People really need to take a long hard look at what is really killing people. And it’s not Judith in number 23 who uses a wood burner 10 times a year

Absolutely this!! Well said.

Wood an old farm neighbour told us heats you three times

1 chopping the wood into logs, 2 splitting them for kindling. 3 burning them

I love a fire, you can't beat it. But I do acknowledge the problems and pollutants that wood and coal use bring. My village isn't on mains gas. It isn't hugely rural at all but still, no gas. So a lot of homes are still on solid fuel or use oil or lpg and supplement with solid fuel because lpg is bloody expensive. You can smell the difference at a certain point of the afternoon when everyone gets their stoves going for the heat and water. We're lucky enough to have lpg now but were on solid fuel for a long time so from September to March/April had a fire going 24/7. Now we use it sparingly just for the occasional cosy up.

When people say 'target corporations instead' what they actually mean is 'do something about it, but something that affects me in no way' but that's not possible - there isn't this line between businesses, consumers and people that those that say this seem to be imagining.

I only burn the correct fuel, its chemical treated wood and painted wood that stinks

@Hardbackwriter

When people say 'target corporations instead' what they actually mean is 'do something about it, but something that affects me in no way' but that's not possible - there isn't this line between businesses, consumers and people that those that say this seem to be imagining.

Absolutely agree. I always wonder what people like @FreedomFaith think that corporations are actually doing - burning fuel for the sake of it? ALL pollution ultimately comes back to human consumption, so it's every single one of us responsible, not some magical 'big corporation'.

Even worse we have an open fire. We are keeping it in case of power cuts but are in a smokeless zone. We were thinking of replacing it with a stove but now considering more sustainable alternatives such as solar panels and a little electric stove.

@MojoMoon thank you for this AIBU - YANBU! It's such an important topic that people have no idea about and are sticking their heads in the sand about. I'd never have any source of fire indoors and have removed them from houses in the past. I think connected to this we should not have bonfires or fireworks either. Our air quality is so fragile, especially in cities, we need to take more collective responsibility for it.

It's not about the smell. Or the look of smoke.

@Ddot PM2.5 particulates are released by all wood. Read the study cited in the article by the Guardian - they got those results using dry seasoned wood in best burning practices and state that in real life, people probably don't use best practice all the time so the real life results are worse.

I don't deny that for some rural homes, it may be complicated or hard to replace. It's literally stated in the original post. I think the government should offer much more generous support for insulating and cutting energy demand in homes. There are many things that can be done to improve efficiency even in period homes.

But in towns and cities, there are other options for heating (gas or power and no evidence of regular power cuts) and it's a more densely populated area so more concentration of particulates (particularly when weather is still) . We recognise that exposing children and other people to an individual's choice to smoke cigarettes is unacceptable and banned smoking in public places. Why should we treat this any different?

I don't get quite why all the Very Rural people are so outraged by this post. It literally is not about you.

For what it's worth, my proposed law would be that local councils are given the power to ban them. Currently they don't have the right too. Therefore London councils could ban them immediately with stringent fines (several have already issued pleas not to use them but have no rights to ban) and other areas can do as they wish reflecting their local needs.
Even at low estimates of them producing 23pc of London particulates, it would make a massive difference over night to everyone's health if they could ban them.

We are in rural location and have two multi fuels burners. We got for aesthetic reasons, not really considering the health and environmental impacts but I’m not so keen on using now.

I agree their not ideal but like I said my home is bloody freezing. I only use when I cant get the house above 14 it's not cheap to run but I dont want to be ill and I get alot of pain when cold.

I know the question was aimed at City dwellers, but they aren't for the wealthy in rural areas, as we have free fuel. Power stations don't have to be running to heat my home, just a fallen tree or branch from the wood, dry stored for 12 months.

There is a very big space between "towns" and "off grid".

You are being a berk.

Newsflash.

None of us need to justify ourselves to you, You have delusions of grandeur.

The 2 aren't a million miles apart!

In terms of what can be done to mitigate them there are some commonalities.

In terms of their impacts, they’re pretty different.

Lumping them together is a bit daft.

And you won’t get disagreement from me that institutions (business, govt) need to be the ones transforming the food system, the transport system, the energy system our housing stock and most importantly the financial sector to tackle climate change in particular.

Air quality is much more local. Some solutions will be common to both - don’t have coal-fired power stations in built up areas (or at all), get rid of ICE cars.

But there are things that have a big local impact on air quality that are much more marginal from a carbon perspective. Domestic burning is one of them.

Trying to conflate them muddies the waters at best.

I dont eat meat, I don't fly, I buy most of my clothes second hand, I grow my own vegetables but I'm not willing to freeze sorry not sorry. Are you without sin