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

@MojoMoon but a large percentage of our electricity comes from burning fossil fuels! And some of our ‘eco’ options are extremely inefficient.

@EddieVeddersfoxymop

I absolutely detest these stoves and the huge rise in garden fire pits. I am surrounded by people that like to burn things all the time........I have 2 medical conditions triggered by smoke and so sometimes actually have to leave my house and go out when my neighbour starts burning. I can't use my own garden, can't open windows, hang washing or even stay at home because someone close by decides to burn shit. I contacted the council who basically shrugged their shoulders, saying they can do nothing. Meanwhile I'm left unable to use my home or garden because of the frequency of local burning. Hate these things- they shouldn't be allowed in villages or towns. No neighbours for miles, then crack on but in close proximity it just shouldn't happen. I appreciate I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about it, but it's so wearing day after day - and because its different people each time I cannot get any help.

I think you need to start badgering your MP. Explain the impact on your health. I think we all need to start doing that. They need to know if public opinion is turning and then they might do something.

@GermioneHranger

I think the issue is if they are banned in towns and cities, how would this work? We have one as we are rural (several miles from the local town) however we have the local towns name on our address. Without it, we'd have no heating in some areas of the house - if they banned it in towns then how would it be policed? I think it would be quite hard!

It's cold up north 🥶

Same applies to me. Define "town". The nearest town is on my address, I am represented by Town Councillors in the town but there are a few fields and a hill separating my village from the town.

Probably justify it in the same way people justify having more than one child, a car, buying clothes that they don’t strictly need, eating meat and dairy, wearing leather, flying....,,,

Incinerating it is just wasting the embedded energy though, unless you capture the heat.

@MojoMoon

For those "very rural" people asking about power cuts and the need for back up.

Ok, how about you are banned from using them unless the local council waives the ban for a day if you have a power cut? If there is a widespread long lasting power cut, each day the local council can issue a proclamation saying that it's ok today.

Sorted.

Still no reason for them to exist in big cities

You are not going to spend £thousands in a wood burner plus having the wood there, all dried etc… if you need it a few times in the year. Once the wood burner is installed, it’s going to be used.

@icedcoffees that's something that could be solved relatively easily if there was the political will. We could tax polluting "luxury" behaviours very highly, and subsidise cleaner forms of heating using the proceeds. Insulating poor quality housing would be a massive step in the right direction, so the homes of those in fuel poverty just need much less fuel to heat. We've had politicians tinkering about the edges with policies on this for decades, but they're made very little progress because there just hasn't been political will. It COULD be done, your average wealthy person lives in a well insulated house, but those who can't afford to do it themselves, or don't own their home so can't, need much more government intervention.

I lived in a very rural location in Cumbria that operated on electric storage heaters and single glazed sash windows. It was pretty well insulated as the walls were about half a meter thick. My open fire was absolutely essential in the very cold winters, I did ensure to use smokeless coal though.

I can’t really see the point of one in the middle of a city though.

I'd look at the authors of the report and the amount of wood they burnt to get their results. They are assessing 140kg of wood used as the main source of heating (so assume this is for the entire cold season).

They've massaged the data according to their message. Fake news, anyone?

They are looking at other options - e.g. using clean hydrogen instead of gas, etc.

Well what's the use of forcing us to use hydrogen? I don't have a clean cheap reliable source of that either, not any heater that runs off it. It's like how they keep touting 'heat pumps' as if everybody can spend thousands to have a hole ripped into their house to install a device with unknown reliability which is going to pump in the 'heat' from outside - all -5 degrees of it in winter which I'm sure will keep me nice and toasty.

I wonder if everybody crying about the health risks of air particles has even bothered to compare to the well known health risks of damp and underheated homes.

I live in London, I’m much more concerned about diesel and petrol pollution.

If all vehicles were electric I reckon we could cope with some wood burners.

Heat source air pumps require your home to be hermetically sealed up so no heat is lost. This will dramatically affect indoor air quality, particularly for those people who have dozens of those plug in air fresheners. I passed a house the other day which had the front door open onto the street and almost choked on the strong fragrance chemicals coming out of the door onto the street. I have a lung problem since covid and these chemicals make me breathless and wheezy.

Indoor air quality is an issue for children and animals who can't choose to get away from these plug ins and I don't want to be sealed up in my house thanks very much. I have the windows open a crack all year round and the stove draws air through the room.

@Ibelieveinghosts

Probably justify it in the same way people justify having more than one child, a car, buying clothes that they don’t strictly need, eating meat and dairy, wearing leather, flying....,,,

Well that’s ok as long as you are doing all those things…. I’d add having solar panels, having actually ensure your house is as energy efficient as possible, maybe refusing to buy a house that isn’t (I’m thinking either really new or really old), not buying a house too big for your needs etc etc etc…

If we are honest, we ALL do some of that for various reasons. We all use car/train whatever just for ‘entertainment’ etc….
Some stuff is easy to do for some, harder for others. I suspect it would be much better received to let people do their best and start by what is easiest for them than having a go at them with an ever so long list of things they HAVE TO do (and that is actually impossible to achieve)

@elbea, maybe I’m wrong but I thought coal was worst than wood??

@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.

@Lockheart
"I think traffic is a much bigger concern in terms of air quality in London - woodsmoke is probably just a drop in the ocean!"

This is completely wrong, that's the whole point of today's news story. Emissions from domestic wood burning accounted for 38 per cent of all PM2. 5 emissions in 2019, compared to 12 per cent from road transport and 13 per cent from heavy industry.

The problem @MojoMoon is using wet wood, not dried & seasoned wood, and smoking coal, not smoke-free.

From the article

"Domestic wood burning is the single biggest source of PM2.5 air pollution in the UK, producing three times more pollution than road traffic"

@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.

Ooh looking at it again, I think others are right, there's more pollution from wood burners than traffic.

@TheyWentToSeaInASieve exactly!!

I want to retrospectively insulate my home but its quite difficult and expensive. There are cavity walls but the company that came out said that it ran a high risk of creating damp in our house and making it colder so we dont want that. Then the external insulation was going to be well over 10k. I've found a wall paper thats supposed to help a bit thats affordable. Ive also heard about painting the house with water repellant cream as damp houses lose more heat than dry ones but i cant get a figure for this.

I have mild asthma, which is made significantly worse by woodsmoke. No problem with properly seasoned and dry wood (unless I'm indoors next to one), only with the sort of wet or green wood that so many people burn either in their gardens or in their wood burners. The problem isn't wood burners so much, as the way people use them.

This is one of those headline grabbing reports, which actually doesn’t make sense as a statistic.

A 2017 report by the government’s air quality expert group assessed the grams emitted an hour from ecodesign stoves and found it to be six times higher than HGVs. “You would be rightly up in arms if six lorries were driving in your street each evening, but we have normalised home wood burning” Fuller said.

Six lorries often drive down my street every 5 minutes all day in London. I’m on a main road?

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.