HIGHLIGHTING DANGER OF WOODBURNERS

[GlassHouseBlue]

Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) -
essentially tiny particles of soot - is one
of the most dangerous air pollutants.
Breathing it in is linked to lung cancer,
heart damage, strokes, impaired cognition
and mental health problems, and can
exacerbate conditions such as asthma,
COPD and pulmonary fibrosis. Children
and elderly people are most vulnerable

Stupid comments like this is why OP is wasting her breath.

Lots of people who smoke cigarettes don’t get lung cancer but it doesn’t mean cigarettes don’t cause lung cancer.

There’s literally no point in trying to reason intelligently with people using evidence and research anymore OP. People get their facts from TikTok and YouTube shorts.

The risk to be wary of is when people are filling their homes with carcinogenic smoke. Your neighbour burning a few logs outdoors in the winter is not going to give you cancer.

I hope you've cut out all other carcinogens from your life if you're so paranoid about this. There are a lot of them!

You really “stink” of woodsmoke sitting in your own kitchen just because your neighbour has a wood burner?
The only time my clothing smelled of smoke was after I sat right next to a bonfire or a barbecue.
Have neighbours with wood burners, and although you get a whiff of woodsmoke occasionally, I’ve never experienced a whole room smelling of smoke 🤷‍♀️

And coal. What do you think caused the peasouper thick fogs in London - burning fuel in open fires.

They are massively polluting in built up areas where lots of people own them.

Quicker to use my brain than look stuff up and then type it out in my own words, but ta v much for the compliment you didn't think you were giving.

And average life expectancy would be lower with all those things to skew the figures.

I forgot about the smoking and lung damage post WWI gas attacks and other disabilities/affecting men (mostly) and occupational hazards. But it was late.

So perhaps this is a wider argument about pollution in built up neighbourhoods and applying it universally is incorrect and short sighted when considering not everyone has access to gas heating - which is also bad for the environment and electrical heating bar new underfloor heating which again is often inaccessible is ineffective. In some places wood is free and available after storms with barely 0 transport emissions making it overall the best environmental heating solution and the only one available for some.

The echo chamber is the 'I like them so I'm ignoring the pollution' group.

Probably.
We still get the 'granny smoked 400 a day and didn't die until she was 175' brigade too.

When my neighbours have their fire on the whole street, including our house and garden, stinks. We live in a slightly more built up part of an overall rural area.

We have some oddball that posts similar every year on the village fb site and delivers leaflets to houses she sees with smoke coming out of the chimney.
Guess where the leaflets go...🔥

Thank you.
But you do know nobody here will listen, because they think they have the right to poison their neighbour's families.

I'm 60, we are smoked out by our neighbour's woodburning stove which is lit 365 days a year.
I have asthma, I need to use a steroid inhaler twice a day just to stay alive, but we can't have windows open even in July/August heat, because at 6 o'clock every evening their woodburner will be belching out smoke. We have to go indoors and shut all windows, we can't sit in our garden any more to enjoy summer evenings.

We complained to the environmental health dept but they came out to check, during the day when the thing wasn't belching smoke into our garden, and they told us there was no problem.

Even if these things can't be banned altogether their use should be restricted to the colder months when fewer people are spending time outdoors.

And before anyone tells me to "just move somewhere else", we can't afford to - we are a low income household because I can't work due to my disabilities and our house needs a lot of work done before it would be sellable. So we are trapped and have come to dread the summer evenings.

Sorry but this simply isn't true. Particulate emissions can minimized under absolutely perfect conditions but not eliminated.

Hell could literally freeze over before I would give up my open fire. It is one of the greatest pleasures in the world. I often find people that are driving this initiative live in a new(ish) build in the suburbs and think everyone lives like they do.

It's the bonfires that annoy me. All the houses have large gardens with plenty of room for composting and there are also garden waste collections yet people feel the need to have massive smokey bonfires on hot summer evenings when you want the windows open or to sit in the garden. Personally I think they need to be banned both for public health and environmental reasons.

Why is someone an oddball for caring about pollution though?

I live rurally in a not particularly new house. We're electric only. It's not cheap. I still hate pollution generating burners and coal fires.

The problem is when people burn wood that isn't properly dried. If it's been left outside or isn't properly seasoned then the smoke can be horrendous. We used to have some not very bright next door neighbours who would leave their wood out in their porch to get wet and then put it straight on the fire - the smoke was horrendous! Fortunately they couldn't be bothered to light it very often and soon moved out.
Everyone has fires around here, it's not ideal but it is what it is, we don't have mains gas as an option and are too far from the road for oil delivery. So it's fires or hideously expensive electric heating.
I grew up with open fires as a child so it's probably too late for me to be saved anyway!

And? If you don’t like them, you don’t have to have one. It sounds like your house isn’t a period house anyway.

I do have to put up with the pollution of others having them though, they stink.

Living in cold, damp conditions is also very bad for your health - and that is how we'd be living if we didn't have the rayburn and stove lit.

This is giving me "my Gran smoked and lived till 96" vibes 😂

This is my thoughts.
Coal fires growing up no health issues .
Grandparents lived to 70/80s it was smoking that tooke them.

Otter grandparents both died young due to two different health conditions and used gas fires

Is it just log fires that the issue is or open/multi fuel stoves ?
I don’t think the Risks are any different to before.

This is just a scare tactic to get everyone in line .
Picking on a small majority to look like they are doing something for the environment . .

Meanwhile outdoors?

Outdoors is fine. We're hugely spread out where I am. The autumn plant waste fires put a lot more smoke into the valley.

“I'll never understand why people can't say I see the evidence but I'm going to do it anyway. Instead of, my opinions render evidence meaningless.”

@Aberentian, 100% this ^