Wood burners - will the SNP and Greens please finally ban them?

[Turtlesgottaturtle]

In my view banning wood-burning stoves should be seen as an urgent priority for the new Scottish government. I don't know why people have to have the right to cause serious everyday pollution to their neighbours, simply to produce heat in their living room, when other options are available and already installed in their homes. Where I live there's almost always a smell of smoke and there's often a thick smog. Smoke gets into other people's houses even if they never open a window - for example if your windows and doors let in any air at all, which they do. Often, if you step outside your front door it's like standing next to a bonfire, and smoke immediately gets into your house through the briefly opened door. You can't use your garden if the wind is blowing in the wrong direction, unless you're happy to breathe in smoke.

I'll link to an article on the incredibly high level of pollution produced by these wood-burning stoves:
"Even a modern, approved, “eco-friendly” wood burner produces 750 times as many fine particulates as a heavy goods vehicle. - These poisons can affect every organ in the body. Tiny particles pass straight through your lungs into the bloodstream. Wherever they lodge they cause harm. They’re associated with a wide range of cancers, heart and lung disease, strokes, dementia and the loss of intelligence. They age your skin and damage your liver. They harm foetuses in the womb and children’s development."

Things have moved on since he wrote that article. Wood-burning stoves are not now restricted to the upper middle classes. I live in a working-class area and I'd say that every second house has one of these stoves. We have plenty of cheap wood in Scotland. Some people use their wood burner all day and half the night. And it's getting worse, quickly. No thought seems to be given to the fact that this affects not just the house owners but also the neighbours.

I think wood burners have become an obsession for a lot of people, so politicians won't act. Of course, the NHS won't remotely be able to cope with the impact.

Burning Shame – George Monbiot

I'm with you OP, exceptions perhaps for people in rural areas who seem to lose power frequently going by posts here, but in cities and towns there is definitely no need to emit smoke that prevents neighbours from opening their window and makes it unpleasant to walk up the street.

So, no.

Anyone who has (not you) will know exactly what I mean in regards to the difference.

So rural houses can heat their homes cheaply but people in towns or villages with gas won’t be allowed that option under your grand plans OP, just because someone has gas available doesn’t mean they can afford to heat their homes, not all houses reach a comfortable or affordable temperature without the addition of woodburners or open fires no matter where you live in the country, woodburners, and I presume in your plans, open fires are also to be banned, how do you plan to police this across the country? A woodburner and open fire police force? Will they arrest the little old lady who can’t afford to put the central heating on but can heat one room with her open fire?

Some people would have to spend money on changing their heating arrangements if a ban was brought in, and the government would need to consider grants, adjustment periods, etc. You would be very much in the minority though, assuming that you're in a village where others have gas heating. I used to live in a house which when I bought it only had a wood/coal fire and I paid to have a gas central system put in. From memory it cost around £6K for a 3 bed house, but would be more than that now. There was electricity, so the option of electric heating too. These days heat pumps would come into the mix.

Funny isn’t it how Scandinavian residents aren’t all chocking to death

wood burners (stoves) are extremely common in Scandinavian homes, serving as both a primary or secondary heat source and a key element of cozy, traditional "hygge" culture. Over 50% of Norwegian homes have them, and they are widely used across Sweden and Denmark, even in modern city apartments

If it’s not visible it’s not smog.

It would be policed by the fact that it would be illegal for installers to make the installations, and people could be reported for having the burners (they're not exactly invisible - a big black pipe sticks up out of the roof and smelly smoke belches out of it). Who knows, even nice people might decide to report on the basis that they would prefer their children not to die of cancer or themselves to get dementia for the sake of their neighbour's choice of heating. I think it's absolutely insane that we have the science and yet people are allowed to do this.

I live in London and asked the green party canvasser who came to our door about it. She said it wasn't a policy and that there was new 'clean' wood available!
Both our neighbours have them and i can smell them all through the winter. I try not to look at the data around how polluting they are esp as I have a child with severe asthma.

It's visible on days when there's no wind. The smoke goes straight down to ground level and stays there, in a kind of black spiral pattern. That may vary depending on how dry the wood is, etc.

Maybe people in London would buy this new miracle wood, but there's no way people where I live would.

Are you taking your campaign to Scandinavia once you’ve conquered Britain OP?

To your point b) impact on NHS Scotland - minimal to the point of not quantifiable.

So the little old lady who has managed not to get dementia despite her open fire can die of hypothermia instead then, nice.

I think that they should tackle those people stilll burning wet wood or using open stoves before coming after those using modern stoves with dry wood. I know people still doing the above.

Also where does it end? We should then ban paraffin candles ( most scented candles sold on shops) which are really toxic and really serve no purpose. We should ban all barbecues especially in parks / or at the beach where people expect fresh air, we should ban all petrol cars ( including vintage ones).

Gas cookers are deadly as well apparently

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

Believe me, unless you live in a bloody massive house you’re not going to have your wood burner going for 15 hours a day. In the middle of winter, we have ours lit for at most 4 hours from late afternoon to mid evening. Keeps our house toasty warm all night! We rarely need to use the gas boiler. We also have a meter that checks particulates and it’s always at a negligible level. Interestingly, during lockdown, it barely recorded anything - we live 1.2 mile from the M61. Now, in summer when the burner is obviously not being used, the levels are higher than during lockdown.

There's a useful policy document on the use of wood burners in the nordic countries. The Scottish Government could certainly learn from the measures that are being taken there. Here's a quote, and I'll link to the document:

"Air pollution is the largest environmental health risk in the Nordic countries despite relatively low concentrations. The project NordSmoke aimed to evaluate scenarios for mitigation measures to reduce air pollution and the health burden from residential wood combustion towards 2030 in the Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway."

Policy Brief: Potential for reducing the health burden of air pollution from residential wood combustion in the Nordic countries

Separate from that, here is something recent on Demark:
|
"November 5, 2025
A group of public health experts in Denmark have recommended banning residential wood burning.
The Council for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention issued a report on air pollution (PDF) in Denmark.
The independent expert body explained that virtually all Danes are exposed to health-harming levels of air pollution. They recommended “key prevention measures” to reduce this exposure, including banning the use of wood stoves.
According to the expert group, small-scale combustion appliances—mainly wood burning in private homes—are the largest source of direct fine particle (PM2.5) emissions in Denmark. They are also a significant source of black carbon, which is also a climate pollutant.
Almost a fifth of households in Denmark have a wood stove, and approximately 70,000 households burn wood as their primary heating source.
Some Danish municipalities have already introduced bans on older wood stoves from before 2008. However, the experts noted:
…new wood-burning stoves also pollute, and for some air pollutants such as black carbon (BC), they pollute more than older wood-burning stoves. Therefore, the real health benefit of this limited ban is minimal."

Also perhaps we need to ban all cars over 10 years old and definitely ban motor cycles that provide lots of carbon.

We should also ban all grilled food especially those large meat grills ( very toxic) , ban making burnt toast especially ban all perfumes being sprayed in shops and so on.

Now you're making it up. When trying to burn wet wood a wood burner would continually just go out. The chimney liner will collect any particulate / tar that’s released so only a minimal amount will actually come out of the chimney. If that were to defy gravity and fall down in a spiral direction, it would end up on the roof not the pavement.

We get it - you don’t like wood burners. That’s your choice. Some of us do.

This is a common tactic, isn't it? If anyone dares say they care about global warming, they're accused of not living in a mud hut and eating grass.
If some people still don't know that eating burnt toast is unhealthy, perhaps some publicity on that wouldn't be a bad idea.
And perhaps there should be stricter tests on vehicle emissions, which some current cars would fail. And so on.
But that isn't what this thread is about, and those individual issues are far smaller than the one we're looking at here.

Or maybe we should just accept that loads of the Scottish population will be developing these health conditions because of their neighbours' heating choices? Because we haven't yet cured the common cold, have we?

Wood burners should be banned in built up areas. I live in London and a next door neighbour has one and we regularly can smell smoke in the air and often our washing smells of smoke after being on the line. Our neighbour is to the west of us so the prevailing wind bows the smoke towards us.
They have a gas boiler and having had a very large newly built extension, their insulation will be so much better than ours. There is no need to a wood burning stove.

I'm not making it up, unfortunately. Wish I was. The visible smog is unusual and weather specific, maybe when there's already mist?
And it's not about whether I like wood burners or not - it's about the internationally recognised extremely serious health consequences of wood burners.

Now, be fair, until I read the OP's suggestion of wearing warm clothes and getting good bedding, I hadn't even considered those as options. Up until now I'd been wandering around the house in a short sleeve t-shirt and sleeping under only a bedsheet while lamenting how cold I felt. Who knew there were other clothing options during cold snaps?

I don't think any of our neighbours know either, based on the amount of discussions we have had about wood, oil and Calor gas prices recently. I will add a notice to the Co-op window with this life changing news as a priority.

Well I once had visitors in August who complained that we didn't have the central heating on at night, despite having been given good bedding and their own electric radiators.
It's extremely common for people to stick the central heating on and go around in t-shirts - I see that all the time. Glad you're into layers too.

You would have to ban open coal fires first. Loads around still on my housing estate, despite the fact they can connect to the gas network for about £3K.