Woodburner - health risks

[SecretOfChange]

Just came across this article: amp.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/18/wood-burners-triple-harmful-indoor-air-pollution-study-finds

What do you make of it? Real issue? Paranoia? Has anyone heard anything like this before and from other sources? Thanks.

@FreakA I'm not sure what we can and can't do yet but I'd have it in the whole house if we could. We are having to totally renovate and should be in the next house for some time, so doing the right thing in terms of the environment and energy is a priority. The atmosphere in our downstairs which has all ufh is so nice, just a consistent comfortable heat all the time rather than the draughts you get in a poorly insulated house with radiators and original wooden floors (which is what we had before). Yes can we please stop talking about boats. Op it seems odd you only just thought about this now after shelling out for an installation which must have cost you a bit. Did you not find any warnings whilst making your decision or your purchase?

We did keep the radiators on our upper floor. We have a wet system on the ground floor. We do have old floor boards in the oldest part of the house and left the rads in there. And the fireplace that used to house the cooking range in the Victorian era. Mainly to keep the authenticity of the old cottage. In fact technically a hovel when we went to an open air museum! When built it almost certainly would have had earth floors.

Wet underfloor heating upstairs is difficult to lay for obvious reasons. We have electric ufh in bathrooms though and towel rads on the central heating system. All this was installed 10 years ago and I’m not sure if things have changed!

We have the highest quality glass in our orangery kitchen and wall insulation. I love the overall heat of ufh but this house stays warm and windows are new, doors fit and it’s ventilated properly so we never have condensation. It’s a big house so it’s never going to be cheap to run but it’s as good as we can get it.

@MrsJamin Installing a woodburner was part of a big renovation project, and this was the part that went smoothly whilst other things were far more stressful and took more of my attention. I've not heard of any downsides or health risks prior to installation tbh. I am definitely attracted to the warm, cosy feeling that fireplaces create so I can't say I regret installing it. Without a doubt I improved the house from its previous condition by removing a very old and potentially dangerous gas fireplace that was there. It's a big room with high ceilings so I can't imagine it's possible to heat it just with radiators. If I could afford more time for my renovation project, it would have been better to do it over a longer period of time and research everything in greater depth but that wasn't an option for me.

@WoolyMammoth55 got teenagers so think the risk is reduced in that sense as they're practically young adults.

You can get very high output radiators now. Just need to know what to buy. Old barns are often lofty but researching heating options without log fires is possible.

Can anyone tell me wear is the best place to purchase a air quality monitor? Are they expensive?
For those with electric log burners, are they expensive to run?
I have this argument with dh about log burners every single year as he won’t give up our log burner.
He is a country lad and has been brought up with open fires and log burners all his life. It’s a very cheap way to heat our house as he sources the logs himself, chops and splits them and stores them for years.
We started off with an open fire 15 years ago and installed a log burner around 5 years ago.
I won’t lie, I absolutely love it but worry greatly about the pollution and the possible pollution in the home but he will not budge on it, he says it’s the only way we can affordably heat our home. I suffer from low iron so am cold all year round and winter makes me miserable, I need lots of heat. As it is I have throws and hot water bottles.
Can anyone tell me where is the best place to purchase an air quality monitor? Are they expensive?
And for those with electric log burners, are they expensive to run? I won’t give up with my ever lasting quest to find a cheap way to keep our home warm with minimal pollution. It really is quite a dilemma in my world and does stress me out every bloody winter.

I live in a grade II listed house an air source heat pump is out of the question as it would be impossible to insulate the house enough for it to be effective. Yes it does has wood burners and there would have been fires in the house since the 16th century. If you burn well seasoned wood there is very little issue. It’s not a surprise the article was in the Guardian

Thanks @Monkeymum45

@Monkeymum45 read this www.mumsforlungs.org/campaign-blog/2020/12/4/wood-burning and say there is very little issue. Just because people were burning wood in your house since the 16th century doesn't make it right. People burned witches then, was that right too?

Of course it was ! If I found a witch living next door to me I’d stuff her straight into the wood burner !!!!

Dyson has air quality monitors built into their room purification products but other gadgets are available online too.

Its absolutely a real issue, but that said, we're having one installed next month. It'll be occasional use only, and have been reading up on the most efficient stoves (which therefore produce less of the harmful particulates). Also been researching which air purifiers are best to use in conjunction to mitigate the risk, and plan to use only good, dry, seasoned wood, and maybe air out the room a bit afterwards. Im happy with the risk on balance!

Please, everybody, don't just think of burning inside the house. Think, too about never raising pollution of the air in the planet. It doesn't "go away".

@curiouscat1987 I don't understand how you can say that it is an issue but that you're happy to just ignore that? Have you read this? www.mumsforlungs.org/campaign-blog/2020/12/4/wood-burning

[quote MrsJamin]@curiouscat1987 I don't understand how you can say that it is an issue but that you're happy to just ignore that? Have you read this? www.mumsforlungs.org/campaign-blog/2020/12/4/wood-burning[/quote]
Im acknowledging that there is indeed a risk, but for me personally its one im happy on balance to take with mitigating additional steps. The same as someone acknowledging cars pollute and theres a risk of crashing but still driving one for example. Not identical situation of course,but similar balancing of risk if you see what i mean?

I get that not everyone will feel the same and thats fine.

I use log burner with oak briquettes with no additives, company make furniture with oak wood only.

dry, water content less than 10% hardly any smoke and produce more KW compare to wood, I buy massive pallet which reduce price at around 20p per kg.
do I care about particles, no I don't.

if you collect instead of delivery 12p per kg, I would think it is cheaper than switching on a boiler.

mumsy27, where do you buy your briquettes from?
I don’t think we will be allowed to have a log burner in the property we’re buying. And I understand about the pollution, it’s terrible. But we had a super efficient log burner in our last house and the chimney sweep said that it was fantastic as the chimney was so clean. We might need to look at a log burner as a way of heating the grade two listed chapel we’re buying, so we don’t freeze. I’m very conflicted about it though. We want an air source heat pump and solar panels, but I don’t know if we can as yet. We won’t be having gas connected, it will be electric only. I do really want to get away from using fossil fuels if I can.

If I may, below I list newspaper articles, journal papers and reports regarding wood burning stoves, and their impacts on adult and children's health.

• “Nine-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah, who died following an asthma attack, has become the first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death”.
www.rcplondon.ac.uk/news/rcp-special-adviser-air-quality-comments-ella-kissi-debrah-inquest
• Thousands of COPD & asthma hospitalisations due to London's poor air
Between 2014-16, a quarter of those admitted with airway diseases were children under 14 with asthma
www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/mayoral/poor-air-quality-aggrevates-london-asthmatics
• Wood burning stoves are the leading cause of particle pollution.
www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/16/home-wood-burning-biggest-cause-particle-pollution-fires
• The number of wood burners being installed is increasing.
inews.co.uk/news/environment/wood-burning-stoves-trend-pollution-domestic-heating-398075
• Even the most efficient wood-fuelled heating systems emit approximately 300 times more PM2.5 than gas boilers
www.camden.gov.uk/wood-burning-stoves
• Smokeless wood doesn’t mean there is no smoke produced, just reduced, which is still bad. To obtain smokeless burning, you would need complete combustion, which would require stoichiometric burning and far higher temperatures than you can reach with a wood burning stove.
• Incomplete combustion, which occurs in wood burning stoves, can lead to production carbon monoxide gas ultrafine particulates (less than a micron), PM2.5, PM10 and larger.
• Due to the fact you are burning organic material, the products of burning wood are similar to that of cigarette smoke: Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, ultrafine, PM2.5 and PM10 particles etc.
woodsmokepollution.org/assets/toxic_chemicals_wood_cigarette_smoke.pdf
“A typical heater burns about 30 kg per day and, with real-life emissions of normally-operated heaters, and of 10 to 15 g/kg of wood, will emit 300 – 450 g PM2.5 per day, the same as produced by 15,000 – 22,500 cigarettes”.
• Of particular concern is the negative impact on a child’s brain development.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006322318300647
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5893638/
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6417586/
• Black carbon particles can reach foetal side of human placenta
www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11654-3
• Particle pollution is associated lower birth rate.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3055585/
• Just because you can’t see the smoke, doesn’t mean it’s there. Rayleigh scattering intensity scales to the 6th power of the radius in nanoparticles, so near invisible. These particles can reach the brain.
• Nanoparticles linked to Alzheimer’s found in the brains of young people.
www.pnas.org/content/113/39/10797
• Particulate pollution can lead to dementia, such as Alzheimer’s.
www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/06/air-pollution-particles-in-young-brains-linked-to-alzheimers-damage
www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/brain-pollution-evidence-builds-dirty-air-causes-alzheimer-s-dementia
• Nanoparticles found in the human brain.
www.pnas.org/content/113/39/10797
ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP134
• Nanoparticles found in the hearts of young people.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935120307118
• Particle pollution is associated with bronchitis.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6066337/
• Increase chance of getting lung cancer.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29626820/
• Particle pollution is associated with strokes.
academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/31/16/2034/432408
• Particle pollution is associated with cardiovascular problems.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4740122/

🙄. I think I’ll be dead from old age before I’ve read that lot ☝🏼 ( throws another log on the fire ) 🔥

I have read that log burners are unhealthy and also really bad for the environment. We have an old cottage with a log burner which I love but also feel guilty about using - total hypocrite I know. I cut my own logs and so bought a chainsaw from Gumtree and the bloke I bought it off said he only used it a few times 'cos his wife developed breathing problems after they had a log burner installed so they had to have it taken out. I would imagine it is a really bad idea if anyone has asthma, copd or other lung problems or with young kids..... but I am not so worried for my own health tbh, you got to die of something!

I live in a traditional cottage of over 250yrs old. No Mains gas, no mains sewage. LPG and a multifuel stive in my whacking big old inglenook. Its bigger than my bathroom.

And its burning away as i type. Im not bothered about particles on my chest, nor about the smoke coming up from the chimney. I love nothing more than smelling that when out in a walk. Sticking a gas fire in a traditional building is not something im gonna do.

In a report by the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, wood burners are emitting pollutants that are contributing to a health crisis killing 40,000 people a year, who are not necessarily the individuals who are burning the wood.

NHS costs continue to escalate due to poor public health - asthma alone costs the NHS an estimated £1bn a year.

www.rcplondon.ac.uk/projects/outputs/every-breath-we-take-lifelong-impact-air-pollution