To say don't use a wood burner if you have children in the house?

[MojoMoon]

AIBU to say anyone using a wood burning stove with children in the house when it is for cosy vibes and other forms of heating are available should be viewed the same way as someone smoking with children in the room or the car?

Particulate pollution has been linked to miscarriage, low birth weight, respiratory problems and a higher risk of developing dementia.

Why do wood burning defenders respond so vigorously to studies like this? Is it because they have spent money on a wood burning stove and don't want to accept that they should remove it? Is it because they have a feeling of guilt about having been using it with children for years and worry about the damage already done? Or do they simply not believe particulates to be dangerous despite all the scientific evidence to the contrary.

Study:

Children living in homes with wood burners could be exposed to over three times more particulate pollution than those in non-wood-burning homes. The results come from a study that looked at air pollution experienced by primary schoolchildren in Wales.

Fifty-three children from two primary schools in Anglesey (Ynys Môn) were given backpacks equipped with air pollution sensors. They took the packs home and carried them during their journeys to and from school.
Dr Hanbin Zhang, from the University of Exeter and part of the study team, said: “One thing that stood out was the home environment. This was the largest contributor to children’s daily particle pollution exposure – more than school or commuting. This was mainly due to indoor sources such as wood burning and indoor smoking.”

Short peaks in particle pollution were linked to home cooking and secondhand tobacco smoke. Home heating with a fire or stove was linked to longer exposures. In some cases, these persisted overnight in children’s bedrooms as fires remained lit or smouldering with poor ventilation.
Prof Zhiwen Luo from Cardiff University, who led the study said: “During home hours, the average particle pollution in non-smoking homes with wood burners was about 13 micrograms per cubic metre compared with 3.5 micrograms per cubic metre in non-smoking homes without wood burners.
“The study is small, but the contrast was consistent and supports the conclusion that wood burning can substantially increase indoor particle pollution.”
One school was in Holyhead, and the other was in a rural area. We often think of towns and cities are being the most polluted places, but on average, researchers found urban children experienced less particle pollution, compared with those at the rural school.
The study took place in winter, and researchers attributed these differences to contrasts in wood burning. This took place in 21% of homes for the urban schoolchildren and 53% in the rural school.

Cooking added to the measured air pollution, especially when the backpacks were left close to the kitchen in the children’s homes. Short pollution peaks were also measured when children walked past bakeries and restaurants on the high street.

Particle pollution inside the schools was much lower than during travel and at home.

Children who walked to and from school experienced less pollution compared with children who were driven. Parental smoking while driving produced the highest concentrations measured in the study.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/06/children-living-homes-wood-burners-exposed-pollution?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301479725042677?via%3Dihub

So many posters dismissing the dangers. I remember the same kind of response from smokers when smoking became illegal inside public buildings. Lots of people won't take any notice until Local Authorities start to ban their use.

I don't feel we should ban them as its individual choice but DD (asthma) struggles to breathe in a house with one, MIL didn't light hers when DD was there. A few of our neighbours have them and DD says she can feel them in her lungs bit when they are lit even from outside

https://www.dsawsp.org/health/children-and-wood-smoke#:~:text=A%20study%20linked%20pollution%20specifically,when%20air%20pollution%20levels%20rise.

This is why so many people in my village burn wood. No mains gas, and wood is cheaper.

Then simply install an air quality monitor inside your home to see if the log burner is or is not producing particulates and VOC.

My experience is that they don't and that you are more at risk from VOC from cleaning products and Christmas trees and more at risk from 2.5 particulates from regular radiators.

I recently had a woodburner put in. I have a large 5 bed house so having the central heating on was extortionate. We now heat the whole house for free (free wood is easy to get on fbmp) and use champagne corks as firelighters (they come from the yachts here)

I have it going all day and the heat moves up the house.

so yeah, free heating!

What about pellet stoves? In my village in Italy the more rural houses only have a stove as heating. Everyone seems to have replaced their old wood stoves with pellet stoves (I think due to EU regulations)

See I get turned off by hysterical hyperbole. There’s no way that a stove is as bad as passive smoking. I don’t even need any research to tell me that. You know passive smoking where the pollution is so bad you can see, taste and smell the pollution vs a stove where the pollution in the house is so minimal none of those things are true.

hope you don’t burn scented candles OP. They’re just as bad.

Is everybody just going to ignore the risks of a bakery scented commute, though?

Istr toasters were found to be very bad for particulates. And gas cookers/stoves, of course.

I have a lead water pipe which the water company assures me is fine 😁

Not perfect but better.

The pellets are more controlled in terms of composition and the combustion is more complete than in random lumps of wood. That leads to fewer harmful chemicals being produced.

Hydrogen burning is probably the cleanest, followed by gas. Gas is clean because the fuel is uniform in composition and the combustion is tightly controlled to be complete in modern boilers, producing mainly water and CO2. You do get small amounts of other stuff like NOx and CO, but nowhere near as much as you would with wood, which also produces all sorts of other nasty stuff when you burn it. Most of the "smoke" you see coming out of gas boiler flues is actually water vapour.

Well a wood burner is enclosed with a glass door so why aren't you targeting open fires? You have a choice not to use one but I'm very rural so don't have gas and heating oil is extremely expensive so yes I have a wood burner. I have a free supply of wood to burn as have acres of wood which we coppice. I also have 5 diesel vehicles. Electric tractors aren't a thing neither are electric horseboxes. Not that I'd buy them if they were. Electric vehicles are like go carts and don't have the torque required to work the land in mud.

I think you are probably a city dweller with very little understanding of the countryside which provides your food.

You do you and I'll do me.

Maybe check out what effect lead has on peoples brains.

My husband wouldn't agree to me removing it. He's a farmer and we have a high Victorian farmhouse. We have one wood burner in lounge, and its always the warmest room (we're quite sparing with the oil). We also have a free supply of wood. DH loves the wood burner, and it saves us a fortune. The kids are also pro wood burner. The house is well ventilated. I wouldn't use one in a modern well insulated house. It's not ideal but money is tight and I can't be doing with the arguments of removing it.

Interesting choice of picture there.

Wonder if you could split the variables relating to the risk of asthma in young children.

That's the thing, this is all about weighing up risks and doing the best you can in the circumstances. I was able to breastfeed all mine for years and never gave any formula at all. My dc have NEVER been driven to school and don't even know anyone who smokes. My dc far exceed the CMO physical activity guidance and all have very healthy BMIs. My teens have never drunk alcohol to excess and never even tried a vape. My dc are all vaccinated and see a dentist and optician regularly.

But my dc and I live rurally with no mains gas and so they have 2 woodburners at home.

Yes, YABU.

I do worry about the impact of wood burners on neighbour’s health. Fine to say the pollutants are sent up the chimney and out the house but that just means it’s going into the local atmosphere. Fair enough if you chose that health risk for yourself but what about those around you, particularly neighbouring children with asthma who have no choice but to breathe it in. I find it really surprising that in an age when we are concerned about pollution, and burning fossil fuels, how many people seem to think it’s completely fine to burn a carbon based product in their home.

Is it worse than breathing incar fumes? Or factory emissions? Or agriicultural burning?

My gran thought it was absolutely obvious nonsense that there was any such thing as passive smoking (she reluctantly admitted there might be some chance of harm to the smoker themselves) and that she didn't need any study to show her that. And her kids were fine living in a house where the adults smoked 40 a day, further proving it! She was a nurse, incidentally, and very far from unusual in her generation in this belief that passive smoking was a made-up risk and that this was so patently obvious that any evidence to the contrary was clearly propaganda from the fun police.

It's completely unconnected and irrelevant to them - it's not like we all have to choose between wood fumes or factory emissions so people are installing wood burners to get the factory emissions away!

For those citing the study saying particulates were high in a bakery - yes, this is unsurprising. Burning gas in an enclosed space is a well known source of particulates as is flour dust.

If the child was spending 16 hours day in a bakery, this would indeed be a health risk. And there is plenty of evidence that workers in bakeries face elevated respiratory damage risk so much that it is known as "baker's asthma" (which is also triggered by the very fine flour dust) but which studies now show is also connected to the cleaning of ash from ovens.

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/11/4/415

But the child is probably spending maximum ten minutes in a bakery a few times a week so this is going to have a much lower health impacts than what happens for sixteen to twenty four hours a day at home.

So feel free to pop into the bakery on your walk to school.

Life does include unavoidable exposure to elevated levels of particulates, like walking past a bakery or due to tyres from cars.

But lots of exposure to particulates is entirely avoidable. For the vast majority of people, wood burning is a choice. Why would you want to increase your child's exposure to particulates? It is the sustained exposure at high levels that is the risk of causing long term harm to you and particularly to children. A bakery visit or even an annual bonfire isn't the concern.

And for anyone who says "well it never did me any harm" - my granny smoked like a chimney an made it to 98. That doesn't disprove that smoking is dangerous and increases your risk of early death hugely.

But people have ibstalled woid burners rather than open fires. So should they revert back

What about fireworks?

There's a couple of golf clubs and cricket clubs near us who do massive displays and the air is thick and stinks for hours.

Campsites with firepits? Bbqs in gardens in the summer? Allotments with bonfires? Farmers threshing corn and combines kicking up dust. The fields near us had some horrendous (possibly human) excrement slurry spread on then for weeks last year and whole villages were left wretching. I personally can't breathe near oilseed rape.

I don't doubt there are issues but there are similar or worse issues all around us every single day.

Because wood is a cheap, renewable energy source.

Fossil fuels also have serious side effects.

Was her kids health affected?

I think it was only really after Roy Castles death (1994) that passive smoking was confirmed to be a bad thing

Was the research clear about how many hours of burning there was? Where is 16-20 hours coming from?

Households running wood burning fires for 16-20 hours a day would be exceptional I would think? Speaking as the person who buys, stores and carries the wood!