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

Yeah all of these things increase particulate exposure and also some of them are annoying in lots of other ways too.

But - apart from the slurry part which sounds grim and lasted for ages - they are also fairly short lived.
One evening of a fireworks display or a couple of nights of a BBQ in summer do increases you particulate exposure and if you already have asthma night trigger an attack.

But the long term health risks are driven more by sustained high exposure. Like being at home for 16 hours a day with a wood burner for every day of your life.

The others things are bad but that doesn't mean that wood burners at home are worse and also in most cases, a choice.

I think they should be heavily restricted and only allowed where there is no other heating source.
The push back you are getting here is bonkers op!

Do you never drink wine or sit in the sun op?

Oil and gas industry involved in any of this research, by any chance?

Its giving me flashbacks to the Scottish government attempting to ban woodburners - and suggesting portable gas heaters as an alternative.

The particulates are extremely fine dust - they are still in your house long after you put the fire out.

'being at home for 16 hours a day with a wood burner for every day of your life.'

How many people do you think this would describe?

I moved 90 miles to North put of London to beautiful English Countryside.

One of the things I was so smug about was the obvious effect on my lungs, increased life expenctancy etc etc because clearly countryside air is better than London air.

Imagine my outrage when the air quality index listed my area the same if not more polluted than my old London borough.

Turns out it is all the bloody woodburners 😂

My mum has pretty bad asthma. Whether there's any connection between that and growing up in a house full of cigarette smoke is a question of probabilities, not certainties, though. My aunt doesn't have asthma, which for my gran was proof enough that my mum's was nothing to do with the smoke!

Of course some types of wood are toxic ffs

Educate yourself.

www.caledonianstoves.co.uk/what-wood-is-toxic-to-burn-uk/

Much like going to a bakery, brief exposure to the sun or alcohol is not a high risk.

I wouldn't sit in the sun for 12 hours without sunscreen though. Even if it was warm and traditional and people have been outside in the sun for millennia and Aunty Judy took a sunbed every day and lived until 100.

Sustained exposure to the particulates is the highest risk. Like in your house where you probably spend quite a lot of time.

Hard agree. Anyone who has central heating, and still has a log burner, has only got the log burner 'for show.' It's so pointless if you have central heating..

I know several people who have a log burner in a 1980s or 1990s semi-detached brick house, and one woman who has one in a small 2-bed semi detached bungalow. The one in the bungalow is bonkers. The lounge that it's in is 12 x 11 feet in size, and it's blisteringly hot in there when she has it going. It's so hot that she has the lounge window wide open. Go figure!

But she's all like 'hahaha I can still stay warm when there's a power cut.' I can count on the fingers of one hand the amount of hours we have lost power in the last 2 years.

.

Ah, this explains why there are no people aged over 50 💡 Everyone who grew up with open fires and stoves as the only domestic heating has died of ghastly diseases caused by particulate inhalation.

Thanks, OP, I was wondering where all the old people had gone.

All this fuss about pollution and they still allow woodburners. It's madness.

Most children? They generally go to school, do some activities and then are at home for the vast majority of a day (asleep but still at home)

Maybe your kids do loads of wholesome outdoor activities that you want to tell us about but they are probably asleep at home for 10 hours? Plus some meals and bath time? It might not quite be 16 in any individual case but it's also not that controversial to say the place a child spends the largest amount of time is at home

I'm getting a bit sick of being told what to do or not to do on MN.
Don't buy from Shein, don't go on holiday, not don't use a woodburner.
You do you, but you have no right to tell anyone else what to do. I guess you are getting a smug kick from parading your superior behaviour on a public forum though, which I expect is the real point here.

Limitations:

"Lastly, while contextual data helped identify likely pollution sources, source-specific quantification (e.g. distinguishing between cooking, smoking, or wood burning) was not feasible."

"Reliance on self-reported data, including post-survey responses and time-activity logs, introduces potential recall bias, especially among younger participants."

Conclusion:
"Overall, the results demonstrate that adults’ heating, ventilation, and smoking practices have a greater impact on children’s exposure than the children’s own activities or location."

Thhey also did not distinguish between types of fuel burners, which included stoves and open fireplaces, or between types of fuel used. This wasn't mentioned in their limitations but should have been.

So basically, there were confounding variables that they did not control. Perfectly reasonable as they indicated that in their limitations that that was the case. However, as it often the case with the media, they jumped on what they considered to be an interpretation likely to attract views and misrepresented the research.

I'm not saying the research isn't valid (it is, plus it's published in a well regarded journal in the field). However, what I am saying is if you are going to start a thread, you should base it on the published article rather than a newspapers picking and choosing and potentially misinterpreted/exaggerated reports.

My reading of the paper is that the research is interesting and suggests further research using larger numbers that also controls the confounding variables is necessary.

YANBU OP and louder for those at the back!!

Find the cognitive dissonance issue on this to be crazy. The research seems clear.

We stopped using our wood burning stove quite a few years ago when we first came across the studies and nothing I've read since then had convinced me I'm wrong. I miss the coziness of course but there are other ways to replicate it.

Gas cookers are not great either. That's something I'd like to change at some point - but I do have to cook, whereas I don't have to have a wood burner on. It's an uncomfortable truth.

www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/28/pollutants-from-gas-stoves-kill-40000-europeans-each-year-report-finds

I also look to minimise use of aerosols, air fresheners, candles, perfumes etc - none of them is great for us or our kids.

In most they are not allowed
https://www.gov.uk/smoke-control-area-rules

I think this is where some nuance is required too.

Very few people burn wood for 16 hours a day, every day, all year. And if it is only really this sort of consistent exposure that causes concern then the people you hate with 'hobby fires' are probably the least of the problem bearing very few of the negative impacts?

I live in one of these areas, wood burners everywhere!

and being patronising is not a good look

This. The hand-held monitors that you can buy yourself are not very accurate at all. Measuring particulate accurately is very hard. I know this as I am an air quality scientist.

So, it’s like parking your car in the living room with the engine running, but with the car in a sealed chamber vented to a chimney.

What a daft analogy.

As others have said, many of the posts on this thread are absolutely textbook examples of denial, deflection and distraction. Psychologically fascinating.

But agree that as a society we should focus on where the risks are highest - which I think in this context is open fires, people whose only source of heat/cooking is burning wood, and burning dangerous crap. As far as I can tell there is ZERO enforcement of the Clean Air Acts.

If councils were funded to carry out surveys and fine people who used open fires/woodburners illegally, or burnt unsuitable materials, that would make a massive difference. There should also be a campaign to make clear that open fires are REALLY bad for people, especially babies and small children, and ideally government funding to support poor households relying on open fires to install safer forms of heating.

The people I bought my house from had an open fire which they used regularly, despite having small children and being in a smoke control zone. Appalling. I can only imagine that they just did not understand the health or legal risks, so we need an advertising campaign to make the facts clear.

I totally agree with you. My DH was one of the people carrying a backpack in a similar Danish study and because we had visited my parents one single afternoon he won the game of "who had most dangerous particles in his filter" for the local group of test people. He "won" over a guy who lived on the most polluted street in Copenhagen (H.C. Andersens Boulevard).