Pollution from wood burning

[HelenUnderwood]

I am really concerned about the pollution from wood burning, even the latest eco stoves which still produce really small particles that get even deeper into lungs.

We are surrounded by them and some neighbours have taken delivery of treated wood (illegal to burn).

There's some really strong evidence confirming the health impact of burning wood, woodsmokepollution.org Doctors and scientists against wood burning. Gary Fuller The Rising Global Threat of Air Pollution and yet it is a growing problem exacerbated by fuel prices (mind you, wood doesn't come about quickly, it takes years to grow and hours to burn).

What can be done? Burning wood is worse than diesel fumes. Help!!!!

I'm not defending or blaming anyone but when people get them installed for fashion or on a whim they aren't told how to use them. It isn't just having a fire when you use them correctly.

On the coldest days of winter, we use our little wood burner from about 7.30am till 11.30pm., it's often the only form of heating that we have on. The central heating only comes on for an hour or two in the early morning if the internal temperature falls below 12 degrees.

We've had the wooden burner for 12 years and we like it very much. We're fortunate to have an abundance of free wood, so running it is very low cost - all we pay for is chimney sweeping, matches and occasional spares for the stove. I would be very reluctant to get rid of it.

Your neighbour is a menace! Causing thick black smoke is definitely not on and I sympathise.
Sometimes I think our neighbours also burn dodgy stuff on their stove, too! You can usually tell by the smoke or lack of it. Last year, when I went into the back garden to look at our chimney when the woodburner was alight, I couldn't see any smoke, just a shimmering above the chimney, like a heat haze. Next-door's was kicking out loads of smoke! Maybe they have a less efficient appliance or maybe they were burning green wood or treated wood.

I have an eco-burner with filter and will be relying on it this year.I live rurally. My closest neighbour is 50m away.

I had a new roof in the spring so I have a shed full of lathes from the old roof, where they had been drying for 75 years so I know they are fine.

I have logs from an ash tree we took down in 2015. It's been drying in a shed for 7 years and should be enough to get us through to spring. And next years wood is already sawn and stacked.

I don't burn rubbish and do my best to be responsible but I refuse to spend my time like my dm, worrying about the heating bill.

I have asthma and smokes sets it off but we recently switched to heating our boiler with wood and its not affected me at all. If I'm outside I can smell the neighbours' smoke sometimes but doesn't set my asthma off either as its all going up in the air high above me.
Wood is free for us so wood it will be this winter.

The people burning unseasoned wood are massively increasing the risk of a chimney fire due to the deposit build up on the chimney lining. It should be kept for 2 years or be less than 20% moisture.

Quite.

Damp from mould spores is worse, and this will be a real problem if people can not heat their homes.

We had stopped using the wood burner due to the risk but this year we will not be able to afford to heat an old farmhouse on gas CH.

I don't need to store for 2 years to get down to < 20% moisture. Can usually get to that in < 12 months after cutting.

It took about 18 months for the wood we’d stored to get below 20%. It’s nice and dry now. Perhaps the way / place it’s stored makes a difference, also the thickness of the logs?

Surely if lots of people move to burning wood to heat their houses the demand for wood will begin to outstrip supply and the cost will go up. So presumably the impact will be fairly short lived.

Lots of people get cheap or free wood though. It won’t lose its popularity

It’s so concerning that more people are turning to burning wood. It’s definitely false economy. It currently costs the NHS £1 billion a year in damage to health. And that is thought to be a conservative figure. All the time the link between air pollution and disease is being demonstrated, for example, the link between cancers and air pollution is now better understood. Everyone who doesn’t burn wood is doing their community a massive favour. How air pollution causes cancer

costs the NHS £1 billion a year in damage to health. And that is thought to be a conservative figure

Reference please

Always good to have a random massive figure thrown into a thread…

@Dannexe and good to have unbiased and balanced ‘scientific studies’ that never ever seem to report the costs to the nhs of humans not having access to this type of heating. Those costs incurred by increases in damp and mould related illness or just from being cold alone - such as hypothermia, pneumonia, bronchitis, asthma (or is that one allowed only to be on the against side - I’ve lost track). …..
The cynic in me wonders who finds these studies in the first place.

The health related cost figure is taken from a report which can be downloaded from this webpage European Public Health Alliance Report on Health Costs of Domestic Heating. Table 1 states that the health related cost in uk for domestic heat and cooking is €2.7 billion per year. Of this, 40% is due to domestic wood burning (Figure 1). This is equivalent to just under £1 billion per year health related cost due to domestic wood burning heating. The authors of the report state that the cost estimates are conservative because lack of data prevented them from including the impact of indoor air pollution, only effects from outdoor air pollution were considered. Milka Sokolović, the European Public Health Alliance director general, concludes ‘“It is clearer than ever that burning biomass (wood) at home is not only an environmental problem, but also a major health problem.’

Hmm. @RBooth351 So you are happy to give up and ban all gas stoves/ovens too? To ban all forms of cooking with fat and certain types of pans/pots/oven trays. I don’t see anyone complaining about them, even though the report blames those sources too. Nor does the report state what the consequences or costs are of banning coal, gas and wood for cooking and heating. What is the economic and health costs of not being able to heat a home or cook food? Need that to make an informed choice of how to proceed. It’s not even including industrial use of wood, coal,
gas or diesel - those items which produce the oh so green electricity, and used in a lot of industries to manufacture products. Not entirely sure how, from an air sample, you can differentiate between pollutants from a house or a factory when they are built cheek by jowl in the UK. (It does admit that electricity production should and could and will become cleaner) Neither does it state who sponsored the report, only who wrote it.
If you are going to believe all the studies ever made, you need to also be critical of them and ask questions, such as who is finding them and what their motives might be.
The study admits it used estimated and not actual figures for some of its date used in it analysis. It also admits to not always differentiating between heat sources eg placing all wood fires in the category of stoves, even if they were open fires which they admit give different variables - what else have the just amalgamated to skew the final emission figures? They also admit that boilers make a difference to emissions, yet again have not bothered to segregate out the use of wood stoves or multi fuel stoves with back boilers.
It would be interesting to see the sponsors of all the data they have used from third parties too.
so so many question it leaves unanswered.

In Aberdeenshire last year during bad storms some homes were without elect for nearly 3 weeks. The elderly in council houses relied on their open fires for heat and cooking yet the council is planning to rip them all out. Given that the grid is likely to become more and more overstretched, is this a wise move?

*electricity

How old are you if you remember the smog of th the fifties, see you're still here.

Mil was talking about the SMOG yesterday

Think it went into the early 60s

If a woodburner smells as bad as weed as a pp suggested, l will look forward to my new neighbours having to inhale my toxic smells as l have theirs all summer - sorry not sorry

Thanks for your reply, people can make up their own minds. There is significant evidence to demonstrate that the 6% of households in the U.K. that burn wood have a disproportionately negative effect on U.K. air quality and health

Our neighbours used to burn their builders sons business trash throwing on tyres to increase the heat. One woman in the village came banging on the door shouting at our selfishness ruining her washing. We pointed her at the neighbours garden. Now that really did stink the smoke was vile

@RBooth351 people can only truly and fairly make up their mind when they have access to fair, balanced, unbiased, non flawed data and they need to have the means to make personal changes.
The scientific article you posted admits it is itself flawed and uses skewed data sets.
There isn’t that much unbiased data to back up your assertions.
In order to produce heat, we currently
have to burn fuel in some shape. We cannot produce enough ‘clean’ energy - solar or wind for all our needs. Neither is ‘clean’ fuel sources all that environment or health friendly compared to any other heat source. But I suspect for a lot of people it really is a case of nimbyism.