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

And I will not be giving it up…

Pollution this week because ds is traveling abroad and needed to check. He lives in London.

London - 34
Anything below 50 is good
Anything above 300 is hazardous.
Dehli - 1000 (they're currently burning crops.

Where are all the polluting and irresponsible middle classes with their woodburners in London then? (not to mention idling engines).

The article linked to by the OP, is about a Dr complaining about using wood burners in an urban area, where gas is a relatively cheap alternative, especially as most in a city, wont have access to cheap/free logs, like many in the country may have.

Gas of course will be heating your water and the whole house, a woodburner may not be.

We're fixing - or you could tape - acrylic sheets onto cold windows to improve insulation. Even polythene sheeting works, but acrylic is nicer. It really cuts down on the cold coming through.

My house is hundreds of years old and we are not connected to gas, and oil costs a fortune… no log fires and we freeze

Do we know OP is “stuffing hamburgers and flying overseas” and has a “house full of plastic tat?”.

I mean she might, but even if she does it’s rather missing the point.

She’s trying to educate people as to the risks of wood burning stoves, which many people are completely unaware of, as some posters on this thread have made clear.

I was completely unaware when we bought our stove 10 years ago and I only wish I had seen a post such as the one by OP as we’d never have got one.

Are you saying you would rather OP addresses not just wood burning but also plastic pollution, aeroplane emissions, traffic pollution, industrial pollution (here, and in China where at lot of our stuff is manufactured), waste burning, ocean pollution, deforestation, water scarcity etc and that she should be campaigning on all these issues simultaneously?

Carrying that through it would require someone who was eg raising awareness of or fundraising in relation to eg cervical cancer also to campaign on breast cancer, throat cancer, testicular cancer, lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, bowel cancer, skin cancer, leukaemia, brain cancer etc etc, because it’s wrong to campaign on a single issue, right…?

We could all do better and we should all do better, myself absolutely included. I became vegetarian for purely environmental reasons, we are aiming to better insulate our home next year and hopefully install solar panels thanks to Nationwide’s interest free loan scheme.

But I should do more to reduce dairy and I take too many flights (difficult with family abroad).

I need to address this, and don’t try to pretend that is ok not to try.

We don't use central heating so just have a small multifuel in the living room. We're one of two people in our village with a stove. We don't go on holiday or fly anywhere or idle the car. I even have an asthmatic cat (had it when she came to us) who sits quite happily in front of the stove and the vets says her lungs are great.

I had to quit my career due to respiratory issues linked to indoor air pollution. I suffer no such issues at home.

I thought burning solid fuel in urban areas was illegal anyway?? I can't say I notice wood smoke when I visit a city, but I suppose I don't go to the residential areas.

We have no gas (and electricity can be unreliable in winter) so woodburning makes perfect sense. It's free and warms you up 3 times: once when you log it, once when you split it and once when you burn it 😁

Semantics. Of course you could police it, but it's a cost / benefit analysis. The government have clearly deemed it not worth the cost. Same as policing clearly problematic vehicles. Hence my suggestion that lobbying the local MP would be far more effective than posting here.

The council's already have licencing. Most of them anyway. My local council does.

'Why isn't this a balanced view. '

@GlassHouseBlue Because the article and the figures you quote are NOT solely about wood burners as your title suggests, they include fire pits, open fires, barbecues...

A properly installed modern wood burner with filter and flue liner, with the door closed represents no risk to the inhabitants of the house. It produces, on average, less than 1% of the particulates generated by an open fire and very little of that escapes into the room. They are effective, carbon neutral and ideal for those of us in rural environments where the power goes down with every storm.

So shout all you like but at least try to get your facts right.

Why isn't this a balanced view. I imagine the people who burn wood also idle their cars.

What a ridiculous thing to write. You’re undermining yourself with that.

“Little or no risk to the inhabitants of the house”

what about those outside the house exposed to the particulates from the chimney?

in rural environments it will be minimal. In urban areas not so much.

https://bespokefire.com/products/product/exodraft-wood-stove-filters/

Who's to say people on here commenting aren't doing both ?

If a single post on here at least makes people think more about the impact of woodburning on their and other peoples health then that is worth doing in my opinion.

Yes these threads attract people who are die hard advocats and insist that woodburning doesn't harm them or anyone else. In the same way you are always going to get people talking about how their Aunt smoked 150 woodbines a day and lived to 105.

But they also attract people sitting on the fence thinking about the issue and may change their minds. Or at least make them consider the impact more, whereas a letter to an MP might be read by one or two people and then filed away in a dusty draw. The MP might take up the issue or they might not.

There's a place for both approaches in my opinion. I will never stop posting against woodburning because it is a wholly stupid thing to be doing when you look at our greater efforts in trying to reduce carbon emissions and improve air quality. It activity works against them. Why spend millions forcing people to improve car emissions and reduce pollution of all types, only to wreck the air quality with woodburning ? It simply makes no sense to do it where cleaner options are available like mains gas.

Eh?

I will never stop posting against woodburning because it is a wholly stupid thing to be doing when you look at our greater efforts in trying to reduce carbon emissions and improve air quality. It activity works against them.

Wood is actually a carbon neutral, sustainable heat source. And causes little issues if used appropriately ie in less built-up areas.

We have a gas boiler but also have fairly frequent power cuts, sometimes several hours long, so we need our woodburner for heat and basic cooking when the electricity is out. (Even gas boilers need electricity to function).

Thankfully our woodburner is a well maintained, super low emissions model.

because overall cars cause alot more pollution and theres alot more of them, hence the need for better cars

We need to campaign for electricity to become less expensive. Gas isn’t the answer either, but it’s cheaper than electric heating. And yet, why? According to British Gas, 43% of electricity in the UK comes from renewables. I realise there’s infrastructure to be built, but why is still so bloody expensive when we’ve already got half the infrastructure already? Here’s why: Centrica, who own British Gas, paid out £144 million to shareholders last year, after reporting £751 million in profits, an increase of 10-fold from 2022. We’re focusing on the wrong end of the scale.

Thank you for posting this, I was unaware of the risks of gas hobs.

Recognising I’m privileged to be able to afford it, I will now look into replacing our hob with an electric hob of some kind.

Those shareholders will mostly be mine and your pension funds.

Electricity prices are pegged to wholesale prices which are highly dependent on international prices for gas.

This is always such a one sided argument. Living in a rural environment I gave a choice between
A. my woodburner using wood from local (within 2 mile radius) windblown trees, cut and transported by DH, dried to less than 10% moisture in our Woodstore before burning.

B. Heating by oil from the North Sea, trsnsferred to the Netherlands, then back to the UK, then finally delivered by oil tanker, roughly 4 -5 deliveries pa depending on severity of weather.

I've asked many times but no one can tell me how the cradle-grave PM2.5 of my log burning stove compares with the cradle-grave emissions of oil central heating.

Pension funds will hold v small amounts in energy companies, some might even have no investment in them.

Why is UK renewable energy pegged to the international wholesale price of gas?

Is that something that is set in stone? immovable?

Needs to change and if it did, it would get the public onside with renewables as we'd all see the benefits.

This does seem to be the weakness, as i see it, with GB Energy, make 120% of our own Electricity? so what!!! it wont reduce prices.

Not too sure what the 34 figure represents but these are screenshots of pollutants in my old neighbourhood in London (zone 2/3, fairly leafy)

Of course Delhi is worse but it’s a bit disingenuous to say there aren’t huge problems with London air quality.

Sorry that was in response to @T4phage