Wood smoke is toxic

vsteblin said :

Wood smoke smells like bacon and eggs to me, so wood smoke must be safe.

Had wood smoke for breakfast this morning, and it was ****ING DELICIOUS!

AirPatriot said :

“Wood smoke is the new cigarette smoke. How long did it take for people to understand secondhand smoke and the health impacts? Now, the same thing is happening with wood smoke, which contains many of the same carcinogens as cigarette smoke, plus dioxins and fine particulate matter.”

If you don’t like our air, kindly stop breathing it.

vsteblin said :

Alaska … Canada…
Wake up sheeple, wood heating is murder!

That would make you the same vsteblin screaming about the joys of children and their brown fat reserves they develop when, and the harmful wood smoke you seem to experience in your various multiple residences in:
Davis, California
Paolo Alto, California
Powell River, BC 1600 km away,
2570 Laurier Crescent, Prince George, BC, conveniently between to the Canadian Prince George Regional Hospital Psych Ward Outpatient Clinic and the rail yard, a further 900 km away,
or that time you piped up as a commenter from New Haven, Connecticut, on the other side of the continent, about 3000 km away?

Also regularly contributing to the American Wood Smoke Activist (page 13), the publication with the Mission Statement of: to educate public officials, government and all citizens about wood smoke as a major form of hazardous air pollution that affects our health, use of our property, water, crops, livestock, the environment and climate change. We urge citizens everywhere to press for legislative changes to call wood smoke a public nuisance under state health codes and to ban all wood burning. “Breathing wood smoke is smoking!”

Also more recently providing your support to the West Australian laws?

Are we just meant to accept you as a local with open arms?

vsteblin said :

Consider how the Arctic peoples never got to burn wood and still somewhat survived!

You mean we should all resort to burning whale oil, seal fat, and drift wood, like the innuit and eskimo?
That would be super effective, and the solution scales so well!

“Wood smoke is the new cigarette smoke. How long did it take for people to understand secondhand smoke and the health impacts? Now, the same thing is happening with wood smoke, which contains many of the same carcinogens as cigarette smoke, plus dioxins and fine particulate matter.”

I’m going to print out this thread and burn it.

Wood heaters weighed in the balance:

For:

1) It has recreational value for some
2) Some people find it cheap
3) It annoys pedants.

I’ve got ducted gas heating and so I installed a smoker cabinet in my back yard to enable people to smell the joy of woodsmoke mixed with cooking meat the whole year round.

you’re welcome

vsteblin said :

To “colourful sydney”, I am just “venting” like the wood burners. A few more burners could also shut up their flues. Ain’t gonna happen, is it, until bylaws change!

What are you a terminator? Why won’t you die??????

Wood heaters weighed in the balance:

For:

1) It has recreational value for some
2) Some people find it cheap

Against:

1) It kills
2) It makes people seriously sick
3) It aggravates existing lung conditions
4) It reduces ammenity (use of yards, windows, clothes lines etc by neighbours)
5) It supports the economics of land clearing
6) It depletes habitats
7) It adds to global warming through methane and other gases plus soot
8) Resources are misallocated because of a market price failure of wood fuel

To “colourful sydney”, I am just “venting” like the wood burners. A few more burners could also shut up their flues. Ain’t gonna happen, is it, until bylaws change!

vsteblin said :

I find it interesting how women especially like the smell of wood smoke. It probably is a genetic “extended phenotype thing” related to a survival of “home hearthing” genes. The guys, however, survive better with clean air, probably because of “ancient hunting”. Note the recent “Lovelace” research on how smoke seems more to affect white guys.

First Study Ever on Effect of Wood Smoke in Smokers Conducted by Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute
1 July 2010
Albuquerque, New Mexico….The nation’s first scientific study on the effects of wood smoke in smokers shows that wood smoke is associated with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and has identified a link that increases the risk for reduced lung function in cigarette smokers. That exposure to wood smoke causes COPD was previously found to be common in women in developing countries, but has not been recognized as being a hazard at concentrations generally found in developed countries.
The objective was to evaluate the risk of wood smoke for COPD in a population of smokers in the United States, and whether non-hereditary changes of DNA that were detected in sputum samples of these patients were correlated to the disease of COPD as shown by the destruction of lung function. The association between wood smoke and reduced lung function was stronger among current cigarette smokers, non-Hispanic whites and men.
Lead investigators at Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute (LRRI) in New Mexico, the only dedicated respiratory research center in the US, in collaboration with the University of New Mexico School of Medicine and the University of Colorado at Denver, conducted the study which was financed by the appropriation from the Tobacco Settlement Fund, and from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The findings were recently published in the American Journal of Respiratory Critical Care Medicine, a publication by the American Thoracic Society.
Yohannes Tesfaigzi, Ph.D., Senior Scientist at LRRI based in ABQ, NM and lead investigator, said, “The findings are significant and timely because it shows that there are many factors that reduce lung function in the world today.” Tesfaigzi continued, “Our findings suggest that smokers of cigarettes who are exposed to wood smoke increase their risk of having reduced lung function.”
For the research, a cross sectional study of 1,827 subjects were drawn from the Lovelace Smokers’ Cohort, a predominantly female cohort of smokers that is unique with its high percentage of Mexican Hispanic participants. The wood smoke exposure was self-reported. The research included measuring air entering and leaving the lungs, airflow obstruction and chronic bronchitis.

Also explored were modification of wood smoke exposure with current cigarette smokers, ethnicity, sex, and the relationship with lung cancer-related genes on COPD.
Robert W. Rubin, Ph.D., CEO of Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute, said, “Many people use wood smoke as a major heating source and also smoke cigarettes, and this research proves that it can be a very unhealthy combination.” Rubin continued, “With the legitimate concern to find alternative energy and heating methods in the world, we need more research of this kind to make certain that we do not add to the many factors in the air we breathe that will contribute to the destruction of lung function.”

I find it interesting that you don’t shut up.

I find it interesting how women especially like the smell of wood smoke. It probably is a genetic “extended phenotype thing” related to a survival of “home hearthing” genes. The guys, however, survive better with clean air, probably because of “ancient hunting”. Note the recent “Lovelace” research on how smoke seems more to affect white guys.

First Study Ever on Effect of Wood Smoke in Smokers Conducted by Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute
1 July 2010
Albuquerque, New Mexico….The nation’s first scientific study on the effects of wood smoke in smokers shows that wood smoke is associated with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and has identified a link that increases the risk for reduced lung function in cigarette smokers. That exposure to wood smoke causes COPD was previously found to be common in women in developing countries, but has not been recognized as being a hazard at concentrations generally found in developed countries.
The objective was to evaluate the risk of wood smoke for COPD in a population of smokers in the United States, and whether non-hereditary changes of DNA that were detected in sputum samples of these patients were correlated to the disease of COPD as shown by the destruction of lung function. The association between wood smoke and reduced lung function was stronger among current cigarette smokers, non-Hispanic whites and men.
Lead investigators at Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute (LRRI) in New Mexico, the only dedicated respiratory research center in the US, in collaboration with the University of New Mexico School of Medicine and the University of Colorado at Denver, conducted the study which was financed by the appropriation from the Tobacco Settlement Fund, and from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The findings were recently published in the American Journal of Respiratory Critical Care Medicine, a publication by the American Thoracic Society.
Yohannes Tesfaigzi, Ph.D., Senior Scientist at LRRI based in ABQ, NM and lead investigator, said, “The findings are significant and timely because it shows that there are many factors that reduce lung function in the world today.” Tesfaigzi continued, “Our findings suggest that smokers of cigarettes who are exposed to wood smoke increase their risk of having reduced lung function.”
For the research, a cross sectional study of 1,827 subjects were drawn from the Lovelace Smokers’ Cohort, a predominantly female cohort of smokers that is unique with its high percentage of Mexican Hispanic participants. The wood smoke exposure was self-reported. The research included measuring air entering and leaving the lungs, airflow obstruction and chronic bronchitis. Also explored were modification of wood smoke exposure with current cigarette smokers, ethnicity, sex, and the relationship with lung cancer-related genes on COPD.
Robert W. Rubin, Ph.D., CEO of Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute, said, “Many people use wood smoke as a major heating source and also smoke cigarettes, and this research proves that it can be a very unhealthy combination.” Rubin continued, “With the legitimate concern to find alternative energy and heating methods in the world, we need more research of this kind to make certain that we do not add to the many factors in the air we breathe that will contribute to the destruction of lung function.”

colourful sydney racing identity said :

…wait a minute, you are actually from the pro wood fire lobby aren’t you? You diabolical fiend.

You almost got away with it, and you would have if not for the pesky kids.

Well done, CSRI, you’ve smoked them out.

Wow, I guess this is someone’s bright idea for a ‘community campaign’.

Here’s a tip for the new player – please, please, for the love of all that is holy, don’t keep registering new names and posting the same crap – it turns people off your cause…wait a minute, you are actually from the pro wood fire lobby aren’t you? You diabolical fiend.

You almost got away with it, and you would have if not for the pesky kids.

All these ‘newbies’ have triggered my asthma. I can’t see the thread for the words.

Here is a list of “reasons” why “wood smoke is safe” collected from those in favour of burning wood. Like a broken record, over and over…

Only a few burn wood, so wood smoke is safe.
Only a few doctors are against burning wood, so wood smoke is safe.
My gramma made apple pies in a wood stove, so wood smoke is safe.
Who cares about the smoke as long as MY family is warm and safe.
The Holy Books say that God likes smoke, so wood smoke is safe.
The cave men used fires, so wood smoke is safe.
The senior levels of government support biomass, so wood smoke is safe.
All the asthmatics have left town, so wood smoke is safe.
That old-timer is 100 and still smokes, and wood smoke is also safe.
Campfire smoke seems to seek out people, so wood smoke must be safe.
Wood smoke smells like bacon and eggs to me, so wood smoke must be safe.
Barbecues and wood smoke smells soooooo good, how can it be bad?
I like the smell of a wood fire, so wood smoke is safe.
I live in the clean air of the forest, so any wood smoke must be safe.
It is annoying when the power goes out, so wood smoke is safe.
The factories produce the smoke of 1000’s of stoves, but wood smoke is safe.
Now dust is really bad, but wood smoke is safe.
Smokers do not smoke wood shavings, but wood smoke is safe.
I am just drying the gyproc, and wood heat is safe to do it.
Cigarettes kill half of the smokers, but wood smoke is safe for all of us.
If wood smoke were that bad, we would all be dead by now.
Now diesel locomotives and trucks are really bad, but wood smoke is safe.
Smoke toughens the immune system, so wood smoke is good.
Everyone can see and smell the mill pollution, but wood smoke is safe.
Forest fires produce natural smoke, and wood smoke is also natural and safe.
Smoking salmon preserves the fish, so wood smoke preserves things.

Someone recently raised the point here that they burn wood because they find it less expensive and they have a limited budget. I think that is valid point, if they can get their wood cheaply, and that there will be some people for whom this concern is true.

But governments must also be cognisant of the fact that there are tens of thousands of people in this region with lung conditions, many of whom are poor and many who are kids. And the debilitating effect of neighbourly woodsmoke on them throughout every winter should be uppermost in the minds of elected representatives and officials in this region. It comes down to that.

Jethro said

“My problem is that there are all of a sudden all these new contributors with names like ’smokefree’ and ‘caresabout health’ who are dumping a huge amount of anti-wood fire heater propaganda on this site.”

Dear Jethro,
Sorry, I didn’t realise this was an “exclusive forum for the select few” that does NOT welcome newcomers or those with views that do NOT agree with respondents like you or who are abused by other respondents when they speak out on an health issue that affects them and their families.

If you in mild Australia think you have problems with winter smoke, consider any valley town in Alaska or Canada. Thank goodness there are fewer people in the colder north. It is a matter of degree and the slightest whiffs of wood smoke are actually pleasing! Still, too many diesel-driving phonies claim poverty or cavemen rights to burn and make all that #$%^&* smoke. We got conditioned with cheap natural gas and then the prices went up and up for greedy profits! So now all those so-called poor people burn wood and claim that the wood smoke is conveniently or historically safe. The really poor don’t even have houses! Good luck when you live near a bully burner, who is right up there with those who play loud music on purpose, throw their old fridges in the bush or smoke in public. Boohoo, when external heat is really for wussies who can’t even bother to put on an extra sweater if cold. Consider how the Arctic peoples never got to burn wood and still somewhat survived! It comes down to plain decency and consideration to others. No-one NEEDS to burn in modern society, they WANT to, and in my opinion, boohoo, are just inconsiderate bullies when in crowded places. Need to respond with some name calling?

I like the smell of wood-smoke, but is the smoke considerate to others?
Some like the smell of bacon, but is bacon good for those with high cholesterol?
Some like the smell of hay, but is hay good for those with allergies?
Some love the faint smell of a campfire, yet we all avoid the actual smoke.
I love the smell of roses, even if it reminds me of funerals.
I love the smell of horses, yet there are some highly allergic.
I love the smell of salted peanuts, yet they can kill some.
Most stoves have air vents to reduce the clogging of lungs.
Some gals like the smell of a guys armpit, and this can be nice for guys!
Oh boohoo, some like the smell of wood smoke.

I have a wood fired heater in my house. I cant afford anything else. On the pension I dont see anyone else volunteering to replace it with a gas system. With all my costs going up higher and higher every single month, having some heat in my little house for me and the grand-kids is what makes my house our home. Please dont rage against me because I cant afford anything else.

I love the smell of woodsmoke in the morning.

Much has been learned already about the effect of particulate on lungs and much more will come. We have discovered the bad effects of cigarette smoke and the same probably applies to wood smoke. Why do so many keep on making tiny particles of wood smoke instead of using cleaner sources?

In my opinion many are not convinced that particles are harmful. Some think that wood smoke is somehow safer than the smell of transportation or industry. Many also have misguided opinions on keeping warm.

The harmful effect of particles has a long history and should be evident. Any caring person could check many sources from the internet or books about how all sorts of particles have all sorts of effects on health. The best is to err on the side of caution and to reduce or stop making tiny particles.

Keeping warm is a challenging but not an overwhelming problem during cold times. In my opinion many are misguided as to the abilities of the human body to produce heat. Humans have an amazing system of keeping warm. We generate heat from food even while sleeping. We generate excess heat with activity. We also have clothes. Why should we need so much external heat?

Why do so many insist on external heat? Are we that lazy or unwilling to wear warmer clothes? Is there anything wrong with wearing a coat inside your home and then turning down the heat? More activity would be good for many of us except for breathing in all the smoke particles that wood burners make. Get active or wear warmer clothes and get off the making smoke bandwagon.

I’m particularly enjoying the revelation of a whole tribe of previously undiscovered nutjobs.

CaresAboutHealth said :

Jethro said :

My problem is that there are all of a sudden all these new contributors with names like ‘smokefree’ and ‘caresabout health’ who are dumping a huge amount of anti-wood fire heater propaganda on this site.

It’s really sad that the Australian Lung Foundation, the American Lung Foundation and even the president of the Tasmanian AMA – put out such terrible “propaganda”?

Yet the people who make smokes and profit from selling them are considered totally honest!

I thought a good Rioter would want to check the facts and consider who profits from mis-information!!!

I don;t have a problem with people quoting from these groups, or having a point-of-view… that’s what a forum is for. However, it appears that this thread is being heavily contributed to by an organised special interest group, as opposed to individuals with an opinion.

If you are a group, you should say so.

Children have brown fat which makes heat and lessens their need for so much external heat. Adults who constantly feel cold can also get more brown fat by becoming active. But healthy activity needs clean air and exercising in smoke can do more damage than good. Wood burning and any smoke leads to a negative, spiralling, external heat system that seems silly. A body that relies on external heat lessens its ability to make internal heat. People burn more wood, make more smoke and then need even more external heat. Silly! A blogger from Fairbanks, Alaska commented that “External heat is for wussies”.
Another alternative if cold is to wear warmer clothes. Wear two sweaters, two pairs of socks, wear long underwear even inside the house. The pioneers used to wear a nightcap to bed to prevent head heat loss at night. They also used wood mostly to cook food because that was safer. Are we that spoiled that we need to heat the whole house with expensive fossil fuels? Then when the price of heating oil or natural gas goes up, many whine and go back to burning wood since it seems cheaper.
Central heat is a luxury unnecessary for basic health. Nobody “needs” to burn wood and nobody “needs” to make the smoke that can bother neighbours. Turn the thermostat down, wear warmer clothes, get active to make more brown fat, and butt out already with all the smoke.

Pommy bastard said “My money is on him/her flogging “reconditioned” gas heaters.” For the record, I don’t make money out of anything these days so I for one have no vested interest in this. Not sure about others here. And when I did make a living, it wasn’t for private interests. Nor am I a member of any political or environmental group. That’s not a boast it’s just that I’m not much of a joiner I’m afraid. But there are some very good groups out there working for the improvement of this failing planet and I am appreciative of that. I think we all should be even if we differ here and there.

Skidbladnir, I don’t get carried away with statistics as I’ve had plenty of experience with them and know their limitations. I am particularly unimpressed by increases on small bases. When the UK base has solid increase on a decent base, I’ll be impressed. In the meantime, I would encourage them to do a lot more.

housebound said :

I light my heater and I get whatever pollution that comes with it (not much if I operate the heater properly). You switch on your electric heating, and the residents of the Hunter Valley get your pollution. Pick the one who doesn’t care about neighbours.

Whichever way the wind blows, it takes the carcinogens away from your house and into a neighbour’s. You don’t suffer from your pollution, only your neighbours, if you live in an urban area.

As it happens, my rooftop solar PV cells generate more electricity than I use. But even if I didn’t, the discussion document produced as part of the process to set Australia’s Air Quality Standards says that power station must be equipped with fabric filters that cost in the order of $110 million in capital expenditure and a further $5 million per annum in operating costs, resulting in negligible pollution at ground level.

If you can put a HEPA filter on your chimney, like the power stations do, then your comments might make sense. But I’ll bet you it would be blocked in less than a day – every seen what a kilogram> of gooey toxic creosote particles looks like? That’s what the average wood heater user produces in less than a week.

If you tried to filter you pollution to the same standard as the power stations, the toxic smoke would enter your house and you’d be so sick you’d never want to use a wood heater again.

vsteblin said :

Shooting used to be common…Wood burning also causes grief in crowded places… external heat is not really basic to health.

My favourite part were when you equated wood heaters with armed combat, and then suggested it was impossible to either receive frostbite or freeze to death.
A truly stunning argument.

vsteblin said :

When the health costs of neighbours are added to the overall situation, wood burning is not cheaper in cities.

We have our gas-fired NIMBYs who refuse to give us local generation, competition with industry and export for imported transportable energy, our solar feed in tariff and ornery farmers hating wind generation to help keep peak electricity prices high, and minimal market forces keeping prices low, so neighbour health (the very essence of an externalised cost, your health is your responsibility) is and will remain of minimal concern compared to keeping your children comfortable.

For the sake of carrying weight with your average Canberran, why should we stop caring about the cheapest way to keep warm?
Why should we start caring about your personal health bills, since they really are your personal responsibility to deal with?
Do you have any definite proof that they are exclusively the fault of wood burners? There are lots of cancer risk factors, lots of ways to be exposed to environmental arsenic, etc…

Jethro said :

My problem is that there are all of a sudden all these new contributors with names like ‘smokefree’ and ‘caresabout health’ who are dumping a huge amount of anti-wood fire heater propaganda on this site.

It feels a bit like an orchestrated campaign by an organised special interest group which, to be perfectly honest, is a use of this forum that rubs me completely the wrong way. I would feel the same if it was a pro-wood fire heater group doing the same thing.

All have an almost identical pedantic and “English as a second language” style of writing.

I’m waiting for the money shot.

Skidbladnir said :

PPS: To the clearly single-topic commenter and throwaway registration ‘CaresAboutHealth’, don’t get me started on the uselessness or the PM2.5 Standard to support arguments like your. … but the standard itself comes with a extensively qualified caveat from its source, to the point that Canberra sticks with PM10 due to the excessive quantities of light dust and pollen we receive due to simple geography.

Canberra reports PM10 as part of the 1998 NEPM (National Environment Protection Measure) agreement. Unfortunately, almost all research published since 1993 shows that the adverse health problems are caused by the sub-class of particles less than 2.5 microns (ie PM2.5). In 1998, Australia wasn’t measuring PM2.5 – so it would have been difficult to set a standard for something that wasn’t being measured.

They realised they had to do something about PM2.5 – a standard was added in 2003, based on international research, as a temporary measure until 2005, where all Australian ambient air quality standards were up for review. Sadly, due to inadequate resources, that review is still nowhere near complete.

Similar Government delays meant Australia took until 2002/3 to adopt the standards for diesel vehicles adopted almost a decade earlier in the US and Europe. How many times have you seen a diesel ute belching out carcinogenic black smoke every time it goes uphill? Many of these vehicles could be converted to LPG, of have filters fitted to them, for less than the cost of the damage they do to our health in 12 months of use.

I’m not a single issue person, but I do believe in checking the facts. Personally wasn’t too bothered about the gas-fired power station because I’ve never seen any sensible estimates of harmful emissions.

In fact, all the research – Australian and overseas – shows that PM2.5 is the most harmful pollutant in our air, and that it causes at least 10 times as many premature deaths as the next worst pollutant (ozone).

NZ also has woodsmoke problems. A study in Christchurch found that people living in the smokiest areas had 16% higher overall death rates (and 68% more respiratory deaths) than the areas with the least woodsmoke. NZ introduced much stricter wood heater regulations over a decade ago.

Unfortunately, our Government is scared of the wood heating industry (just like they are of the coal industry) so they tie themselves up in bureaucratic knots instead of doing their job of being guided by proven scientific facts to protect the health of the people who elected them.

Shooting used to be common during the pioneer days because of the wide open spaces. Gradually as towns became more populated the odd shooting accident happened and the use of guns was banned in crowded places. Banning guns was common sense as shooting near others was really unnecessary anyway.
Wood burning also causes grief in crowded places since many are sensitive to the smoke. As with shooting, wood burning is unnecessary since external heat is not really basic to health. Clean but expensive fuels exist for those wanting the luxury of central heat. Children have brown fat for internal heat and adults can always get more active to restore internal heat production. When the health costs of neighbours are added to the overall situation, wood burning is not cheaper in cities.
Considerate people have butted out long ago with burning in city limits and all crowded places need bans on wood burning. Like the shooting of long ago and the more recent bans against cigarette smoke, wood burning bans are the current common sense. Butt out in anticipation and start saving on fuel bills by wearing warm clothes in a colder house.

The anti-woodheater nazis are getting tedious and annoying. Their resorting to clearing statistics for Australia, when they claimed early on the real reason is concern for poorly neighbours, shows their campaign up as being ideologically motivated – or grapsing at any old argument to support their cause.

I light my heater and I get whatever pollution that comes with it (not much if I operate the heater properly). You switch on your electric heating, and the residents of the Hunter Valley get your pollution. Pick the one who doesn’t care about neighbours.

My wood comes from a sustainable woodlot – I know this for certain because I own it. Coal, gas and coal seam gas are inherently unsustainable. Pick the one who is out to plunder.

Jethro said :

My problem is that there are all of a sudden all these new contributors with names like ‘smokefree’ and ‘caresabout health’ who are dumping a huge amount of anti-wood fire heater propaganda on this site.

It’s really sad that the Australian Lung Foundation, the American Lung Foundation and even the president of the Tasmanian AMA – put out such terrible “propaganda”?

Yet the people who make smokes and profit from selling them are considered totally honest!

I thought a good Rioter would want to check the facts and consider who profits from mis-information!!!

CraigT said :

I have a feeling Kristo works for the coal industry and has been paid to agitate to increase the amount of coal we burn.

My money is on him/her flogging “reconditioned” gas heaters.

kristo said :

The UK’s forests account for oly 12 per cent of its area, Craig T. I wouldn’t get carried away with that square kilometre figure…

Yes, and?

Smoke bothers your neighbors yet you continue to burn? What happened to common sense?
Wood smoke is very dangerous and for many it leads to hospital visits or worse.
I have been reading online comments for years and over and over I see the same kind of belligerent behavior!

For those that wonder why bylaws and bans are falling into place, just re-read what some of you have said. Oh, and continue to burn… it sure is helping get those bylaws and bans in place!!!

Skidbladnir, I apologise for misunderstanding you. I quite agree that we should price them correctly – and would add that we should also price the health impacts of burning them, particularly in built up areas. That would fix the problem in an ideal way but I can’t see it happening here. Generally addressing market failure through pricing measures stumbles politically (as the Federal Labor government recently discovered) so I think a regulatory approach involving prohibiting new installations and subsidising replacements is probably more realistic now in this region. But pricing the large externalities involved would be terrific…

I wouldn’t get carried away with yours either, kristo…
The important bit of his sentence was ‘is increasing’, not the number.

The UK’s forests account for oly 12 per cent of its area, Craig T. I wouldn’t get carried away with that square kilometre figure…

kristo said :

Well, Pommy bastard, if you move back to the UK, you might need to import it, as most of its forests went up in smoke long ago, about the time that much of the wildlife disappeared and the lungs of the planet began to wilt unlamented.

I’d have to import it as there are no eucalypt plantations in the UK, numbnuts.

Funnily enough my wood fired heater and wood fired Aga were very cheap to run in the UK, despite the UK being (on Kristo’s planet) deforrested. Perhaps they were plastic logs I was burning?

kristo said :

And what are we to think about the soul of a person who is indifferent to the suffering of neighbours? Not much, I think…

So why are you boring the tits off us with your single issue obsession? Think of our suffering you heartless beast!

kristo said :

Jethro, if someone has a good point, let them speak. The arguments you are opposed to in this post are based on verifiable facts with plenty of links to reputable sources – not propaganda. The truth is, I’ve been taking a cool and logical line here without complaint about a number of crude insults that have escaped moderation. So I think I’m entitled to now suggest that “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen”…

if you can’t stand the woodsmoke…….get out of canberra…….

Kristo’s clearly not interested in facts in his relentless propagandising.
The United Kingdom has 30,000 square km of forest and that number is increasing.

Australia’s forested land is also staying reasonably static because, believe it or not, we actually plant trees as well as cutting them down – it’s called forest management.

I have a feeling Kristo works for the coal industry and has been paid to agitate to increase the amount of coal we burn.

kristo said :

Actually, Skidbaldnir, trees aren’t free even though we tend to assume it.

We?
I know trees aren’t exactly free, there’s a reason that i mentioned them in terms of pricing them appropriately.
But I realise you’ve got an axe to grind, i’ll just wait until you’ve all let off some steam.
But don’t try and speak for me, and I won’t be condescending (that means i’ll talk down to you).

Trees are considered free (ie: no price/value) for most people, especially those who can’t recognise economic realities beyond their own spending.
(ie: stripping things from the common nature parks, since there’s no fences or person there to stop them, apparently its without price. If the same person can’t understand the utility of a tree within the local ecology and/or economy, it has no value, so they might as well take it…)
Environment is terrifically undervalued, because we don’t price it into calculations accurately.

But remember that you’re on RiotACT, so always bear in mind two things in mind:
1- at least a third of the commenters here won’t be arguing from positions of objectivity, they’ll only see you with your axe to grind, threatening their lifestyle.
2- There’s a simple formula,
Normal person + audience + anonymity = total dickhead
It doesn’t happen to everybody in every forum, but it certainly is common, to the point that the phenomenon has a name, The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. Google it. It might be happening to you and you don’t realise.

PS: Wood heater owner, but mostly use the central gas one, except when wood-fired romance is called for.

PPS: To the clearly single-topic commenter and throwaway registration ‘CaresAboutHealth’, don’t get me started on the uselessness or the PM2.5 Standard to support arguments like your. I’ll track down several citations for you later since I’m on my phone currently, but the standard itself comes with a extensively qualified caveat from its source, to the point that Canberra sticks with PM10 due to the excessive quantities of light dust and pollen we receive due to simple geography.
We routinely have there discussion whenever ring-ins and astroturfers arrive him the forum holding their own air-quality circlejerk (such as the gas-fired power station NIMBYs), just as you’re having your own one now.
Your kind are very easy to recognise.

Jethro, if someone has a good point, let them speak. The arguments you are opposed to in this post are based on verifiable facts with plenty of links to reputable sources – not propaganda. The truth is, I’ve been taking a cool and logical line here without complaint about a number of crude insults that have escaped moderation. So I think I’m entitled to now suggest that “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen”…

Well, Pommy bastard, if you move back to the UK, you might need to import it, as most of its forests went up in smoke long ago, about the time that much of the wildlife disappeared and the lungs of the planet began to wilt unlamented.

And what are we to think about the soul of a person who is indifferent to the suffering of neighbours? Not much, I think…

If you do not love the smell of wood smoke from a wood burning stove, especially on a crisp autumn morning, then you have no soul.

This thread certainly has made up my mind.

I’m installing one before next autumn.

Oh, and if I move to the UK again, I’m certainly importing eucalypt wood into Blighty to burn, as it is the prince of woodsmokes.

smokefree said :

mxt21 and Kristo

It is a shame that some of your respondents are unable to debate the facts and instead resort to personally attacking you as the messengers. It’s not their fault, they are ill informed and uneducated in this issue like the majority of Canberra residents. Perhaps they should meet those who suffer from asthma, heart disease or the various forms of COPD and who spend their winters in doors like I am forced to do on the advice of my doctor because of the woodsmoke pollution in our neighbourhoods. A friend of mine died last winter. She was suffering from a degenerative lung condition and was regularly in and out of hospital. The woodsmoke in her neighbourhood only made her condition worse. I hope those ill informed people who are attacking you and your message are young, fit and healthy because one day they may be in my situation.

My problem is that there are all of a sudden all these new contributors with names like ‘smokefree’ and ‘caresabout health’ who are dumping a huge amount of anti-wood fire heater propaganda on this site.

It feels a bit like an orchestrated campaign by an organised special interest group which, to be perfectly honest, is a use of this forum that rubs me completely the wrong way. I would feel the same if it was a pro-wood fire heater group doing the same thing.

Actually, Skidbaldnir, trees aren’t free even though we tend to assume it. Undervaluing trees is one of the reasons we have so few on the planet now.

However, I think it is true that the number of people per household is falling. At the time of the last census the statistic was 2.54 so I have adopted a conservative value of 2. While it is possible it could fall below 2 in future years, 2 is a safe bet now, and as the rate of asthma is increasing, the soundness of the claim that each wood heater user is almost certainly causing suffering to a near neighbour with a lung condition will remain sound.

Indeed, as population density increases, wood heaters are likely to be bordered by high density households so the number of people exposed to pollution at close quarters will likely increase.

On people / household See http://canberra2030.org.au/files/download/?id=85

Skidbladnir said :

mxt21 said :

[/quote>

… the same city and suburbs …. regularly explode into flame almost every year whenever we get a day over 35C helped by the annual westerly winds, and blow more smoke into your fragile world in a single day than you’d see from an entire city with wood heaters.

Poor little snowflake, trying to externalise the costs of your own trivial life problems onto the majority, while totally ignoring the large one.

Canberra has a monitor that measures PM2.5 pollution – the air pollutant with no safe level that the scientists say causes 10 times as many premature deaths as the next worst pollutant (ozone). Average PM2.5 pollution measurements from 2004-2008 are at http://woodsmoke.3sc.net/canberra

The wood heating season (May-July) has two to three times times as much health-hazardous PM2.5 pollution as the rest of the year. If PAH and other carcinogens had been measured, the same pattern would almost certainly be apparent.

Bushfires cause some problems. Health authorities recommend not exercising when smoke levels are high. Perhaps all we can do is change our behaviour (e.g. not exercising, & using air filters if available, to reduce our exposure to PM2.5 and carcinogens from bushfires) and manage the risk the best we can, e.g. have wide firebreaks to help stop fires spreading.

But Canberra’s pollution measurements clearly show that the 3-4% of Canberrans using wood heating cause a significant health hazard for the whole city – far worse than bushfires. Most wood heater uses have no idea how unhealthy the smoke is. In the olden days, when life expectancy was 28 and half of all babies died before their first birthday, dying of cancer at age 50, or suffering middle ear infections, increased risk of catching flu bugs, or even a 5-point reduction in IQ by the time a kid reached 5 wasn’t as significant as not having heating.

But times have changed – we now have much healthier ways of heating our homes. Kristo quoted the Australian Lung Foundation. The American Lung Association [i]“strongly recommends using cleaner, less toxic sources of heat. Converting a wood-burning fireplace or stove to use either natural gas or propane will eliminate exposure to the dangerous toxins wood burning generates including dioxin, arsenic and formaldehyde” [/i] see http://www.lungusa.org/press-room/press-releases/cleaner-alternatives-for-winter-heat.html

Sadly, people who spent their hard-earned cash on a wood heater have been conned by an industry that cares much more about profits and selling more heaters than our health.

In the long run, our health is more important, so please follow the ALA’s advice and switch to cleaner heating to “eliminate exposure to the dangerous toxins wood burning generates including dioxin, arsenic and formaldehyde”

Smokefree reckons people who disagree with his stalinist desire to rule-make is “ill informed and uneducated”.

I beg to differ.

My risk assessment for burning wood tells me its benefits far outweigh the nervous-nellies’ poorly-reasoned fears of lung cancer.

This is a classic example of nimby-style fake environmentalism – they say they don’t want smoke in the air, but they are happy for diesel-exhaust-smoke-belching machinery SOMEWHERE ELSE to dig up coal, diesel-exhaust-smoke-belching machinery SOMEWHERE ELSE to transport it, and for the coal to be burnt SOMEWHERE ELSE to create power, much of which dissipates on its way to us for us to use (and pay for) to heat our houses.

One controlled burn by ACT Parks will release more woodsmoke into the air than an entire winter’s worth of fireplace smoke anyway.

During winter, I go out once every month or so and get myself a trailer of wood. The wood is not habitat, it is a fire risk. I am not clearing land, in fact I burn as much wood as I can but it grows far quicker than I can burn it. So I’m not paying for electricity, I’m getting my heating for nothing more than my own effort and a bit of juice for the chainsaws.

I’m quite sick of being oppressed by excessive legislation introduced by neurotic whiners who are scared of everything, from peanuts to fireworks.

Love your neigbor. Don’t kill, poisen, hurt, or harm your neighbors with wood smoke. This is the law of God and man. The visible and invisible smoke from woodburning adds up to form pollution like the smoke from Ghenna that Jesus warned about in the parable of the weeds and such. These fiery furnaces or great fires are an abomination as recorded in the Bible. Note that Ghenna was translated into Hell in the Bible.

Follow the wayshowers like Kristos for they know the way; the truth, and follow the experts in the Australian Lung Assn. They know that the pm from one old stove is 80 mcg/m3 in calm winds when the std is 25 to 35 mcg/m3 in most civilized countries. They know the pm can be 180 mcg/m3 for an hour in calm winds that happen almost every day and this can cause heart attacks and asthma attacks and hospitlize some of the sensitives or 50% +/- of the population. They know that the doses all add up over time to cause cancer and terrible diseases costing society a great deal of money and pain and suffering.It should be obvious to you that wood smoke is bad for health since it smells and makes eyes sting in minutes in small amounts. Doctors in the USA CDC and Aussie Gov have said if you can see or smell smoke it is a health problem. Google Debris Smoke or Wildfire Smoke.

See http://www.CoalitionAgainstWoodBurning.com or http://www.burningissues.org or http://www.ehhi.org for more science or try the links Kristos was kind enough to share.

Take care of the garden of the earth and stop the global warming from CO2 and soot in addition to stopping the threats to life, health, safety, and welfare. An old stove is not carbon nuetral per USA EPA studies and there is 500 times more soot causing 500 times more warming from soot.

Help Kristos and others work to create a better world, without the hellish fire and smoke. For you reap what you sow and we are talking about fire and smoke here. The way to the higher heavens that are a splendor and pleasure to live in is to show that you are worthy to live there. Perfect yourselves and your ways of living and heating if you want to go to a better world or heaven.Use the free energy streaming through your windows as solar energy with moveable insulation or bubble plastic or cheap plastic films. Use insulation and weatherization to create annuities of free money from energy savings to pay for more and better ways to heat. Use infared space heaters to heat one romm not a whole house to save money and energy if you have to and wear warmer clothes and hats. Use gas stoves and fireplaces to save money and save lives and health care costs. Use gas,oil, electrical energy from sources that reduce pollution or eliminate it. Don’t go back to the old ways proven bad. Continue to perfect yourselves and your ways of living with newer and better ways of doing things.

Considerate people have butted out long ago with wood smoke in crowded areas. And for heat we only need warm clothes, not the whole house heated. External heat is really only a luxury, check out how the Arctic peoples survived without wood. I find wood burners in the same mindset as people who make needless noise and litter. They expect someone else to clean up the mess. Butt out already in crowded areas to be considerate and wear an extra sweater in a colder house to save on costs.

Clearly screwed up a quote flag above… 🙁 Anyone want to fix it for me?

Ahh ya gotta die from something ya might as well die warm,

“hey hon chuck a coupla lumps o dat treated pine on da fire will yas”

“but you were just saying you wanted the aircon on a minute ago”

“Oh yeah, sorry forgot it ain’t winters no more”

mxt21 and Kristo

It is a shame that some of your respondents are unable to debate the facts and instead resort to personally attacking you as the messengers. It’s not their fault, they are ill informed and uneducated in this issue like the majority of Canberra residents. Perhaps they should meet those who suffer from asthma, heart disease or the various forms of COPD and who spend their winters in doors like I am forced to do on the advice of my doctor because of the woodsmoke pollution in our neighbourhoods. A friend of mine died last winter. She was suffering from a degenerative lung condition and was regularly in and out of hospital. The woodsmoke in her neighbourhood only made her condition worse. I hope those ill informed people who are attacking you and your message are young, fit and healthy because one day they may be in my situation.

mxt21 said :

[/quote>

You’re talking about the same city and suburbs as most RiotACT readers are familiar with, the ones surrounded by grassland, woody bush, eucalypt or pine forest?
The same wild spaces that give Canberra the ‘bush capital’ name, help you keep your property values, were there long before you were, and yet regularly explode into flame almost every year whenever we get a day over 35C helped by the annual westerly winds, and blow more smoke into your fragile world in a single day than you’d see from an entire city with wood heaters?

Poor little snowflake, trying to externalise the costs of your own trivial life problems onto the majority, while totally ignoring the large one.

(Also, wood is cheap because it literally grows on trees. Price those into the market effectively, instead of making smoke illegal. Further, you can’t claim to be part of a silent majority when you’re relying on a 1-in-8 population statistic in a city with a falling persons-per-residence value, nor to claim that your anecdotal “Everyone I speak to” stories carry across an entire city, when you’re clearly in an area suffering from a local concentrator)

mxt21 said :

petulant selfish wanker.

mxt21 said :

petulant selfish wanker.

mxt21 said :

petulant selfish wanker.

Maybe, but next time you’re near a mirror, see how good you are at playing ‘Spot the hypocrite’. I reckon you’ve got some scope for improvement.

This thread is starting to make me REALLY want to install a wood heater. Stop beating your drum so hard.

Asthma is natures way of tipping a little chlorine in the shallow end of the gene pool. Don’t fight it – embrace it.

I support everything Kristo says 100%. He is the only one here making sense. All of the rest of you sound like a bunch of petulant selfish wankers.
There is absolutely no place for wood smoke in our towns, cities and suburbs. It is simply too dirty, too poisonous and too horrible to inflict on your neighbours.

I say stop burning any solid fuel in the suburbs. Anyone who thinks they are burning “clean” or “environmentally friendly” is seriously deluded and is a polluter. You can’t go around polluting and denying it. We need strong protective laws against anti-social people like that. Ban the bastard burners.

I don’t think the NSW Dept of Environment and Conservation was joking when they published a report by NSW Health researchers showing that fine particle air pollution kills up to 1400 Sydneysiders every year – mainly from heart and lung diseases, with many others requiring hospital treatment.

The emissions inventory shows that the 4.3% of houses with wood heaters are the largest single source (34%) of health-hazardous PM2.5 pollution – 4503 tonnes, compared to a 757 tonnes for all the passenger cars in Sydney. More info: woodsmoke.3sc.net/pm25-no-safe-level

The average wood heater in Sydney puts out as much toxic pollution as about 100 passenger cars and the average wood heater in Canberra as much as 200 passenger cars. Most people would object to having to put up with the pollution of 100 or 200 passenger cars polluting my air by doing their entire year’s driving round and round their house. Those people should rightly object to living next to an “Australian Standards” wood heater. AS4013 is effectively defunct because the Australian wood heating industry objected to the changes recommended by the Australian Standards Committee, leaving Standards Australia powerless to do anything.

Most of us want to protect our families from toxic chemicals such as benzene, formaldehyde polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and dioxins. As well as leading to cancers in the elderly, US researcher have now found that exposure to PAH causes genetic damage in babies and the children of women exposed to high levels of PAH in pregnancy (above 2.26 ng/m3)had a 5 point reduction in IQ when they started school.

The ACT Government doesn’t appear to report PAH levels, but the NSW EPA reported average PAH levels of 8.62 ng/m3 (max 24.0 ng/m3) in Armidale (where woodheater use is common) – about 4 times higher than what was considered high PAH exposure in the US IQ study. Wintertime PAH in Armidale was much higher than Sydney.

A study in Armidale also compared woodsmoke levels with vistits to GPs for respiratory complaints, finding that use of woodheaters results in about 750 additional GP visits every year.

Pandaman argued: “But every other method of heating will give someone else cancer through the burning of coal (ever been near a coal fire power plant, now that’s one hell of a smell) or contribute more highly to global warming than burning wood.”

Actually no, gas and electric heating don’t emit any carcinogens into the air where we live and work. I once took a tour round the Gladstone power station – there was not a whiff of a smell, or any visible smoke. While it’s certainly adding to global warming, my solution would be to mix all the sustainably-harvested wood we currently burn in domestic heaters with the fuel stock for power stations.

Power stations have efficient, high-temperature burners that produce only a fraction of the toxic pollution emitted when the same fuel is burned in domestic heaters, they have efficient filters that trap almost all of the harmful pollution that remains, and the rest is emitted from tall stacks so hardly any of it mixes with the air we breathe.

Replacing woodheaters with gas heating would reduce global warming by as much as equipping 5.8 million Australian households – that about 75% of all houses in Austrlian – with 1 kW of solar (photovoltaic) cells on their roofs – see http://home.mysoul.com.au/dande1/aq/Woodheat_global_warming.pdf

So, if you care about your health or the environment, please follow the advice of the health experts: The Australian Lung Foundation (ALF) recommends: “use alternative methods (instead of wood heaters) for climate control, including insulating and improving the energy efficiency of homes, flued gas and electric heaters and energy efficient house design” see woodsmoke.3sc.net

The American Lung Association “strongly recommends using cleaner, less toxic sources of heat. Converting a wood-burning fireplace or stove to use either natural gas or propane will eliminate exposure to the dangerous toxins wood burning generates including dioxin, arsenic and formaldehyde” see woodsmoke.3sc.net

I suffer from asthma and I have a child that also suffers from asthma. Winter is hell for us because of the smoke in our neighbourhood. They were still going last week in the cold weather. I know the government tries to tell people to burn the right wood and to use their heaters properly but no-one takes any notice and they just burn rubbish to save money. The smoke drifts through our street and despite the fact we do not have one, we can still smell it in our house. Some of our neighbours have even installed old wood heaters in their outdoor entertainment areas and garages. While they are sitting in the front their wood heaters I wish they would realise how much smoke they cause and how it affects our health and makes our lives a misery.

Unfortunately, Shadow Boxer, it is mostly not being replaced: 80% to 90% of wood fuel used in this region is not sustainable because it is sourced from standing paddock trees that are not being replaced, are an extremely valuable habitat source, and the timber is then trucked from distances of up to 400 kms.

See: http://www.environmentcommissioner.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/203641/ACT_REPORT_McArthur_V6.pdf

Thanks for the suggestion about moving. Fortunately, I don’t have a lung condition but if I did, moving would not be a reliable solution so long as people are permitted to install new heaters. That’s a big problem for people with lung conditions like asthma, bronchitis or emphysema (and there are a great many especially as asthma is on the rise)or those with heart problems. You can move to or live in a neighbourhood that looks healthy and the next minute smoke stacks appear.

Governments really need to stop new installations both to provide people with certainty and to ensure that the dirty heater replacement program is effective in progressively reducing this problem.

It is particularly pressing because the price of cleaner energy sources are being taxed whereas dirty fuel wood, with high health externalities is slipping through the net.

Kristo,

You are right. All the health, environmental and medical evidence shows that neighbourhood woodsmoke pollution is a serious health issue and that woodsmoke is just as toxic as cigarette smoke, simply Google it and it is there for all to see. And, if burning wood is so eco friendly, then why does the Australian Greenhouse Office suggest in its publication “Global Warming, Cool It” that people who heat their homes with wood should “consider switching to another option” Page 15.
You are also correct in stating that the wood heating industry blocked attempts to introduce cleaner more efficient wood heaters. In 2007 the Australian Standards Council moved to introduce a new emissions standard for all new wood heaters installed in Australian homes. It wanted to half the emissions produced by wood heaters from 4grams per kilogram of wood burnt to 2 grams or to almost the same level of that now operating in New Zealand. This initiative was designed to clean up the environment and protect commuity health. The Council voted 15 to 4 in favour of the new standard but since 2 of the 4 votes against the new standard represented 50 percent of the wood heating industry the motion was lost. The voting down of the motion comes from an industry that claims it is responsible towards the environment and concerned about public health..what a joke. Meanwhile the Council has never met since to reconsider this issue. It seems to me it is now up to the community (people like you) and responsible governments to take action to clean up our neighbourhoods and protect our health. And to smokefree, I agree, I wish governments and health lobby groups would show as much attention to this issue as they do to cigarette smoking.

Dear Kristo

I am suprised by the level of ignorance towards this issue demonstrated by the many ill informed comments by your respondents. Their attitude appears to be “as long as my backside is warm I don’t care about my neighbours or others.” The same attitude is demonstrated by some of my neighbours. I live in Kambah in the ACT and wood heaters have still be burning as recently as last weekend. The one across the road from me has been burning all day, every day since the Anzac Day long weekend and only stopped last weekend (thats about six months) They source their wood themselves from the bush, parks, reserves and anywhere else they can find it. They also burn wood crates, pallets, fence palings and anything else they can lay their hands on. Their wood heater smolders away while they are at work and then fires up again on their return. The smoke continually blows over to my house and other homes on my side of the road. I am trapped in my home for months on end due to my lung condition and my doctor’s warning not to go outside into my smoke filled street. There are hundreds of people living in Canberra in the same situation. I suppose some of your respondents would find that amuzing by the tone of their ignorant and ill informed posts. They would have a different attitude if they were actually living it, winter in and winter out like me and the many others in Canberra with a heart or lung problems. I also find it ironic that governments have banned cigarette smoking just about everywhere but take little or no action to the problem of neighbourhood woodsmoke pollution which is just as serious, far more widespread and impacts on many more people. Meanwhile, this whole issue that you have raised reminds me of the debate the public had 30 or 35 years ago when people scoffed at the suggestion that cigarette smoking was dangerous to our health and the health of others…..we know very different today. Keep up the good work, you may have got some people thinking and succeeded in changing some attitudes.

Whats rare about box, ironbark and redgum ? they are everywhere even all over California and Spain. Almost all the Firewood in Canberra comes from farms, not forests and it provides a valuable renewable income to farmers and wood carters from Cootamundra to Hillston.

I feel for your disability but seriously you can’t ban something because you have a disability. It’s like the peanut at schools thing.

I suggest you deal with your personal circumstances and disability by living in a place it’s not an issue, higher ground maybe ?

Kristo, box, ironbark and redgum is “rare”, huh?. I notice you’ve failed to balance your 1.5-2.5 million tonnes removal with the amount that is being fixed by growing trees at the same time.

The timber industry is perfectly sustainable (unlike oil and coal) so long as we elect a government that is capable of stopping uncontrolled illegal immigration and makes an effort to deport the recently-arrived rubbish that’s clogging up the outer suburbs of our larger cities, or at least prevent them and the rest of the criminal classes from breeding.

Over the next 20 years, as fossil fuel prices ramp up due to depletion and the economy tanks due to climate-change-related crises in food production people will be increasingly sourcing their energy from local sources. As the ACT Government (for one) has done precisely nothing about taking advantage of our excellent average windspeed for power production or our excellent average non-cloudy days per annum for solar energy production, people will be burning solid fuels, busy-body legislation like the stuff you’re suggesting notwithstanding.

We will be experiencing a global population crash in the next 40 years in any case, so we might as well let the defectives with bad lung genes or over-zealous whingeing genes go first.

Oh, and for those idiots here who’ve fallen for the “Climate Change is a fraud” crap, you need to wake up, learn some survival skills, and stock up on ammunition, because within your lifetime you will experience a failed society due to a combination of peak oil and climate change.
You can bet your bottom dollar that the people who are feeding you the “Climate Change is a Fraud” crap are doing exactly that while they fool you into doing nothing.

Wood fuel only appears cheap because people are not paying anything like what they should for using this fuel, as the previous cited studies show. That is at the heart of the market failure involved.

It is very likely, indeed certain, that inevitable price increases in other fuels will lead to more wood heater installations and wood fuel use, which will make any Australian Home Heater members here happy. But the resulting increased pollution will then trigger a regulatory response – the good old days of ignorance concerning health costs are over. So if you value your existing heater I suggest you start supporting a ban on new installations now or you will be caught up in that regulation, too.

The concept of sustainability also includes human health so wood heating is not sustainable on those grounds alone. In terms of being a renewable resource, it has always been that potentially but the fact is those trees aren’t being replaced in the world and never have been. That’s why Europe was denuded. Wood fuel and agriculture. And this situation is not likely to change because of the pressure on world food supplies on land. So the planet cannot afford the additional deforestation strain of burning wood nor the methane hit that wood heaters produce overnight. Methane is much worse than CO2.

Australia is just as bad in managing our small forests and we don’t have many tees to start with. We are the fifth worst country in the world for deforestation.

o 24% of all wood commercially harvested from Australian forests is for fuelwood.

o Fuelwood removal from Victorian forests is at a rate of 1.5 to 2.5 million tonnes per annum, compared with woodchipping at 1 million tonnes per annum
– much of the fuelwood involves rarer species such as box, ironbark and redgum.

see http://www.energyrating.gov.au/library/pubs/pears-ago1998.pdf

And we’re now looking at an increase of $225/year in electricity bills, making wood heating not only the best at keeping us warm, but also the cheapest. And you can always plant a replacement tree (as we do).

kristo….you are a tool

that is all…….

this is seriously funny.

I hate wood fires so the government should ban them.

Yeah…. right….

Wow, I’ve been reading this site for months and this is the first thing that’s annoyed me enough to register and comment. Kristo, what alternative heating methods do you reccomend? Allow me to give a quick precis of why I reckon wood heating isn’t a bad option:

-Gas fired heating, ducted, non-ducted, gas fired boiler for in slab water heating, whatever – directly burning fossil fuel – a non renewable resource. While this burns more “cleanly” than wood, it still generates CO2 which seems to concern you greatly (amongst many others) and as noted by a few people can cost more than wood fuel. (a renewable resource, whether it is actually renewed or not, it’s something that can be acted upon, once gas is burnt, that’s it) Back of the envelope calculations show this as being better for C02 emissions than electric element heating due to lower distribution losses. The lack of thermal efficiency gives me the shits though.

-electric element heating – you would have to be high to think this is a good idea financially or environmentally, considering the majority of power generation in australia is from burning fossil fuels and the cost of said fossil fuel based power generation is going through the roof due to various factors.

-reverse cycle air conditioning – similar problems to electric element, mitigated due to heat pumps being far more efficient. Another less known problem with any electrically powered heating is that it wreaks havoc with peak loading. (everyone gets home at 530PM and bungs on the heating at the same time) This is pretty much my favourite, because it performs well, is cheaper to run than electric element but still gives our nations electricity producers nightmares. High capital cost though. Plus distributed generation would make it soooo much better.

-wood fire – burning non-fossil fuel hydrocarbons. As Kristo says, burning complex hydrocabrons releases chemical nasties into the air. But as others have said, given the relative rarity of wood fires these days, the concentration is far less than it used to be. And in this country in particular, you’ll cop vast amounts of the same shite every few years over summer as the local vegetation goes up in flames. I honestly don’t see that it’s such a huge deal in the pollution aspect. There are faaaar bigger pollution problems before that. Plus wood is renewable. As someone else mentioned, most people who gather their own wood do so from already fallen trees and anyone who buys wood from retailers is either unable to gather their own, or is a gimp. Yeah it may give you cancer. But every other method of heating will give someone else cancer through the burning of coal (ever been near a coal fire power plant, now that’s one hell of a smell) or contribute more highly to global warming than burning wood. (if you believe in that sort of thing.

Long story short: Wood fires aren’t that bad, everything will give you cancer and I can’t believe I just wasted 20 minutes writing this.

So let’s say we can’t burn any wood at all. What do we do for heating?

Natural gas? Burns and releases carbon based chemicals into the atmosphere.

Electricity? Hmmm, how is this generated?

Let’s keep things in perspective here. The world’s ruminant animals produce more greenhouse gases than all cars, trucks and motorbikes in the world combined. As far as global warming goes, we could easily change the world’s temperature by releasing sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere (in small quantities relative to natural releases – google it for details).

Genuine health concerns are one thing, hysteria about climate change another.

kristo said :

Also wood smoke remains in the blood much longer than tobacco smoke and increases the risk of coronaries.

wow – ground breaking science there.

Lets ban smokers from having wood fires as a trial – see how that goes!!!

Hey Kristo – If you and your “newbie” supporters keep flogging this dead horse you may actually have enough posts to advance from “newbie” status.

By the time that comes along it will be winter again and you will soon realise it does get bloody cold here in Canberra and rather than sitting their in a blanket shivering some people like to try and warm their family homes.

I actually can’t afford a ever rising gas bill and have chosen to get my own wood using my own manual labour in heating my home. I’m lucky that while I am fit and healthy I can choose to provide this option to keep my family warm rather than have my heating choice dictated to me by a corporation/government.

…. and if that option is ever taken from me, i’ll be putting my house on the market and leaving the ACT.

Cheers
Chop

trix said :

Apologies, I saw that reference subsequently to some ACT paper that said that paddock trees are used for burning and are typically not replaced. I would like to see a comparison of the net forest cover across the country or at least the east coast. Because while paddock trees may not be replaced in their original locations due to fire concerns, people seem to be planting new trees on their properties all the time (in different locations).

And I really don’t think wood-burning pollution creates the most impact in terms of carcinogenic toxins in the air these days – you want to look at cars and industrial chimneys first.

Hi Trix. Sorry to take so long replying. I’m afraid that deforestation is a real problem in Australia. “Australia has a small percentage of forests compared to other countries (about 20% of the total land mass) but our forests are disappearing just as quickly as those in more forested countries. Australia ranks fifth in the world for the amount of deforestation that occurs every year.”

See http://www.actnow.com.au/Issues/Deforestation.aspx

I’m afraid that wood burning has denuded the world of many of its forests and if we rely on it for heating a lot more will go. Agriculture is a big reason for deforestation but wood fuel is a great worry and growing because other fuel prices are rising fast…

2-stroke emissions on a Spring Saturday morning?
Hey, leave 2 strokes out of this

This needs to be BANNED!

One question remains…………..

If you find yourself overcome by wood smoke inhalation to the point of involuntarily crapping in your pants do you suggest the Australian Gov’t should deploy qualified personnel to assist you in wiping your ass for you?

Kristo and others, you may be suprised to learn that according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics and ACT Environment less than 3 percent of households in Canberra burn wood for domestic heating, yet the federal depaertment of the environment reports wood burning is responsible for 67 percent of Canberra’s fine particle air pollution. This is compared to 22 percent from motor vehicles. According to the environment department woodburing is also reposnisble for 67 per cent of Canberra’s PAH air pollution compared to 33 percent from motor vehicles. I suggest you also visit; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaxSgglRpLY

Hi Chris. One of the dilemmas of wood smoke is that the overall health risk is not that correlated with visible smoke. If you increase the oxygen supply you increase the burn rate but increase the concentration of mutagens (PAHs or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons). And if you close the air supply you get more particulates which penetrate deeply into the lungs. See http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=5726557 .

Your neighbours might go along with the practice but the problem is that these health threats strike by stealth, long after exposure, so people don’t realise that their lung disease, cancer or coronary was actually caused by winter smoke, so they are not giving informed consent.

Wood smoke actually compares badly to other pollution sources from a health perspective, especially given the duration of exposure over the whole of winter. For many neighbours it is not the odd spring mowing day. The life time risks from wood smoke of cancer, for example, are considered to be 12 times higher than cigarette smoke (see http://www.ecy.wa.gov/pubs/92046.pdf ) but I have read other studies.

Also wood smoke remains in the blood much longer than tobacco smoke and increases the risk of coronaries. “Results indicate that heart electrophysiology was affected up to six hours after elevated PM2.5 exposure. These adverse effects may trigger the onset of acute cardiac events and over time may result in increased risk of chronic heart disease.”
See Science Daily- Particulate Air Pollution Affects Heart Health, Research Finds
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100519112713.htm

My wood fire puts out a few puffs of smoke when first lit, burning pine or old fence pailings. But once roaring away on a solid chunk of old box wood it burns remarkably clean. No smouldering.
I’ve checked with my neighbours to make sure it doesn’t bother them, and they are all cool. A couple even burn wood fires themselves. IMO a great way to heat a house.

How does the nastiness of wood smoke emissions stack up against other ‘environmental toxins’? Vehicle emissions? 2-stroke emissions on a Spring Saturday morning?

I sincerely sympathise with you, smokefree. Thankfully, my daughters and I do not suffer from a lung condition, although others in my street do. Unfortunately, however, we did lose their mother to a form of cancer attributed to the carcingoens with which wood smoke is loaded so, although not proof, these environmental toxins are a poignant issue for us.

“If you can see or smell smoke from your wood heater then you are causing a problem for yourself, your family and your neighbours.” NSW Dept of Environment Climate Change & Water.

http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/woodsmoke/

Thank you Kristo. Despite the many negative an ill informed comments here you have raised a very important health issue. It is intersting that you raise this issue as the ACT is about to introduce new anti-tobacco laws. My situation is that, like many people in Canberra I live with a lung condition and I am imprisoned in my home in winter because of neighbourhood wood smoke pollution. I am advised by my doctor not to go outside in winter because of all the wood smoke pollution in my neighbourhood. She warns that I could end up back in hospital. The sooner people and especially politicians realise that neighbourhood wood smoke is just as serious as tobacco smoke the sooner people like me we will be able to walk out our front doors and breath fresh air, just like non-smokers who want to dine outdoors in a tobacco free environment. Is that too much to ask?

Hi Housebound. It takes time for people to take corrective action and then for that action to take effect. What would be the point in further delay? It would be best if policy decisions are taken now, before people lock in to a poor heating option for next winter.

Living at my mum’s, I hated how the icky smoke from the neighbours wood fire in Winter would sometimes blow all over our hills hoist full of clothes. Lucky for me I wore a lot of black then!

Wow, people really have an axe to grind here in relation to global warming. So far as I can tell, Kristo was merely trying to alert people to the potential health problems associated with breathing air with particles of crap in it. Burning stuff releases stuff into the air – it doesn’t just disappear. Even if you do don’t believe in human-induced global warming, surely you can apply a modicum of charity and entertain Kristo’s point.

I love a wood fired heater as much as the next person – there really is nothing like it for radiant heat and ambiance. But I also like breathing as clean as air as possible. Of course you can use China or India’s emissions to argue against the Australian government taking meaningful action, but why wouldn’t you want to breathe cleaner air locally, if possible?

Kristo, you must be into serious time travel if wood heating is affecting you now.

astrojax said :

oops, ‘affecting’, not ‘affexting’ dang fat fingers – i blame climate change…

Smooth.

No wood fired heater in my Tuggeranong house, ducted gas only 🙂

oops, ‘affecting’, not ‘affexting’ dang fat fingers – i blame climate change…

Actually, Reprobate, staying inside doesn’t much help but if you use one yourself you might think about that gas mask:

“These tiny particles are emitted in neighbourhoods, both inside and out, where people spend most of their time. Unfortunately, wood smoke is not only in the outdoor air we breathe. The particulate matter in wood smoke leaving chimneys is so small that it is not stopped by closed doors and windows, and often seeps into neighbours’ houses. Even more smoke is sometimes released inside homes which heat with wood.” Health Effects of wood Smoke, Washington State Department of Ecology. http://www.ecy.wa.gov/pubs/92046.pdf

Kristo – here’s another option to benefit you at little net cost to thousands of others: Stay inside your house or throw on a dust mask in the small amount of time you are outside in the few still days this will be a potential issue.

Job done.

Next please…

But then we would all be cold, ducted gas is crap, you can’t turn it higher than 21 without huge bills, clearly impractical in Canberra where a trip to put the bin out will take 1/2 an hour to warm up again.

Gas flame heaters don’t heat a large enough area economically and electic heating is just crap in general.

Wood fires warm your bones with a different type of heat, nothing like it

Wow, people must love their wood heaters! Wood-fire smoke is GOOD for you? No?

Surely people don’t think it’s a bad idea to stop new installations, whats the big deal? I remember how thick the blanket of smoke was all night every night during winter in Tuggeranong and after a while it can make you feel sick (even if only for constantly breathing in non-fresh air)

But hey, until China etc does something we should just keep on rolling them out… Um, the smoke is over OUR city. (who cares climate change or otherwise ffs!)

Solidarity said :

I don’t understand greenies in this country, stop impacting our lives. Even if “climate change” and all that stuff actually did exist, Australia is one of the last countries that needs to stop the production of anything.

i think the word you want is ‘affexting’, not ‘impacting’.

and don’t hedge – in fact, don’t bother, but read this: http://unfccc.int/press/fact_sheets/items/4987.php

the middle east? are they huge emitters? hmmmm… who’s impressionable and “gullable” [sic], huh?

Well, I think the greenhouse point is that wood fuel burners have themselves argued that their activity is sustainable when it clearly is not. That means that there is no beneficial offset to the known health problems they pose.

Let me put these in perspective. The mean value of the annual health cost of each Australian wood heater, in 6 studies cited by Dr John J Todd (a senior Australian academic who was consulted by Standards Australia), is $2,450 per annum. Thus the value of health costs associated with using a wood heater for just one year very likely exceed its total purchase price. (John J Todd, Clean Air and Environmental Quality Volume 42 Nov 2008.)

This is actually a lot, a very lot, of unpriced cost. Economists refer to these hidden costs as externalities because they are not internalised into the price of good being sold. Where these externalities are high it is a sign of market failure because the price of the product provides a misleading signal to consumers.

The way to improve the performance of a market selling products with high externalities is to impose a tax or to regulate them. I am suggesting that we continue to pay people to replace them and to stop new installations as a relatively pain free way of moving forward.

kristo said :

Point one: when you burn a dead tree (and these are typically not replaced) you get an immediate release of greenhouse gas at the very time we need to urgently reduce it (before we reach a tipping point) and destroy valuable habitat which is also not being replaced. Secondly, wood fuel supports the economics of land clearing see:

Strategic study of household energy and greenhouse issues a report for environment Australia http://www.energyrating.gov.au/library/pubs/pears-ago1998.pdf

Moreover wood pollution from home heaters is worse than coal burned in power stations because it is burned inefficiently. Of most concern is that people turn them down at night to let them smoulder which produces methane, about the worst thing you can do for green house pollution.

I note that so far I’m the only one providing reputable sources for my comments…

It’s common knowledge that the worlds’ cattle stock produce more methane than any wood heating in Australia. Why haven’t you added banning cows to your diatribe? If I need to provide a source for that, it means you are biased.

Furthermore, dead trees do not need to be replaced. They are dead. They no longer do anything for the air quality (unless you count the decay process, which produces METHANE, which makes your point invalid), which is what this is about. In addition to this, I clearly stated that I do not take hollow trees (nor does any wood carter with an iota of intelligence, as the volume of wood on your load is seriously reduced by including hollow, rotten crap). Did you read my post? Because you’re repsonding to it. In a very biased manner.

Land clearing is exactly that – Clearing. Dead trees are waste on the ground, you don’t take the trees that are growing and active, which is what land clearing is. Even if someone is clearing land, they presumably have permission, which means you need to GTFO. If they are doing it ilegally, it’s a different issue altogether, and not covered in the scope of your initial argument.

Also, it’s much cheaper to run wood heating, as opposed to electric. Are you now saying that you wish to opress the less financially fortunate members of our community who can’t afford modern electric heating? Someone has too much time and money on their hands.

CFCs are a methane derivative, and are much worse than methane, so your

kristo said :

good information

isn’t really what you say it is. Which means your

kristo said :

good decisions

aren’t really, well, good. OR based on accurate information.

It’s almost summer – What smoke are you on about? It’s not heating smoke, it’s from INDUSTRY – Have you been constructing this text spew since winter?!?

Instead of generating more useless statistics for which you can provide a “reputable” link to (also, people are 90% more likely to accept erroneous statistics if you can provide a percentile), you should actually read things like studies and science journals. The people that write the website articles you reference are not qualified in any way to make authoritive statements on the issues at hand – Which negates your entire argument/s.

Sorry if I sound a bit ramblish, Bill @ PJs allowed me to drink way too much in my lunch break.

I don’t see how any of this is remotely related to anything ecological. Stopping what, a maximum of 10000? Wood fired heaters is going to make an environmental impact of…. nothing.

I don’t understand greenies in this country, stop impacting our lives. Even if “climate change” and all that stuff actually did exist, Australia is one of the last countries that needs to stop the production of anything.

You can impliment all the environmental policy you want in this country, but it won’t make a lick of difference until you get China, Russia, the US , Middle east, etc to play ball as well, which they won’t, as they’re not as impressionable or gullable as people down here.

kristo said :

Point one: when you burn a dead tree (and these are typically not replaced) you get an immediate release of greenhouse gas at the very time we need to urgently reduce it (before we reach a tipping point) and destroy valuable habitat which is also not being replaced. Secondly, wood fuel supports the economics of land clearing see:

Strategic study of household energy and greenhouse issues a report for environment Australia http://www.energyrating.gov.au/library/pubs/pears-ago1998.pdf

Moreover wood pollution from home heaters is worse than coal burned in power stations because it is burned inefficiently. Of most concern is that people turn them down at night to let them smoulder which produces methane, about the worst thing you can do for green house pollution.

I note that so far I’m the only one providing reputable sources for my comments…

or instead of just believing what ever the gov tells you, maybe research some information on your own time. maybe you’ll find that human caused “global warming” is nothing more than a money making scheme. if you honestly think humans are responsible for the earths demise in only 150 or so years after it’s been here for 4-6 billion, you need to wake up.

it annoys me that people will get on their high horse and complain about something so trivial when there are much larger problems to deal with

Apologies, I saw that reference subsequently to some ACT paper that said that paddock trees are used for burning and are typically not replaced. I would like to see a comparison of the net forest cover across the country or at least the east coast. Because while paddock trees may not be replaced in their original locations due to fire concerns, people seem to be planting new trees on their properties all the time (in different locations).

And I really don’t think wood-burning pollution creates the most impact in terms of carcinogenic toxins in the air these days – you want to look at cars and industrial chimneys first.

I note you don’t address the point that in Australia, most electricity is generated by burning coal and therefore has a higher ecological impact as well as being non-sustainable.

I also note you don’t cite where your assertion came from that trees are “typically not replaced” when harvested for fuel. I would say that that opinion is founded on pretty much nothing at all in this country.

Finally, burning trees for heating apparently has a net neutral balance in terms of carbon pollution – sure, carbon is released when the tree is burned, but it was sequestered for many years while the tree was growing.

There are problems with the current air?

Lets ban everything.

Next up: Burnt toast gives you cancer!

What am I trying to achieve? Well, good decisions depend upon good information so I am contributing to that.

As for policy possibilities, it is clearly fiscal folly to pay people to take wood heaters out while you allow other people to put them in. We need to prohibit new installations immediately.

That does not affect existing users and others considering a future purchase would simply be steered by this policy to cleaner options before they commit causing little angst except to retailers (who can switch their inventories to other products including flame effect models).

And for each person who makes a cleaner heating choice per year at least 10 people will benefit indefinitely. (I say 10 because each house has around 5 neighbours – including rear corner blocks – and each house has around 2 occupants). Of course, the number of beneficiaries rises when the air quality of the broader community is considered.

If we do this then the replacement subsidy will eventually provide a real divided to the health and well being of the community.

The question is what are you trying to achieve with this diatribe?

I have a reputable source, my wife, it wasn’t until I installed the biggest wood burning slow combustion heater on the market that she finally stopped complaining she was cold.

You’re not getting it back…

so now methane is the problem? ban lentils, kidney beans and chickpeas I say! …or find a way to heat the house by burning methane…. something mr pugwash would love

Point one: when you burn a dead tree (and these are typically not replaced) you get an immediate release of greenhouse gas at the very time we need to urgently reduce it (before we reach a tipping point) and destroy valuable habitat which is also not being replaced. Secondly, wood fuel supports the economics of land clearing see:

Strategic study of household energy and greenhouse issues a report for environment Australia http://www.energyrating.gov.au/library/pubs/pears-ago1998.pdf

Moreover wood pollution from home heaters is worse than coal burned in power stations because it is burned inefficiently. Of most concern is that people turn them down at night to let them smoulder which produces methane, about the worst thing you can do for green house pollution.

I note that so far I’m the only one providing reputable sources for my comments…

Whoops … I meant “pedophilia and child pornography charges”. During the court case he claimed he was acting on behalf of the CIA to try and find out how easy it was to groom children and access child porn.

I seem to recall the last person who moaned about pollution from wood-fired heaters was one Tony Savage who stood as a candidate on that platform in the 1998 ACT election and who was later sent to jail on pedophilia and child molestation charges.

I don’t suppose you’ve noticed that it was freakin’ hot the last few nights? Anyone with a fire going is either “gifted” or elderly, so stop picking on retards and codgers.

Would you prefer us to source our heat via electricty, thus burning coal (which is much worse for the environment) to keep warm?

A quick look around Queanbeyan would reveal many industrial sites located within the valley, which isn’t naturally ventilated in the best way, which would be a more likely source of the smoke.

Also, ACT reports are exactly that – ACT reports. Queanbeyan is in NSW! But this is on par with the rest of your article.

If you knew anything about burning wood, you would also know that you can’t chop down a green tree and burn it (well, you can’t do it SENSIBLY). You need to use dead, dry wood, which more than likely is sourced from a fallen tree on the ground. Are you suggesting that when these dead, and fallen, trees are cut up for firewood, we should source more dead trees to replace them?!?

As a rule of thumb with our wood carting trips, the only dead wood we don’t take is either rotten or is hollow.

so isn’t this why people got rid of their coal fires and switched to burning wood?? much less air pollution plus a renewable resource. As far as I’m aware ‘paddock trees’ are not an endangered species & plenty more get planted as windbreaks, erosion control etc on farms these days to make up for them.

There have been many studies into health effects including the health costs associated with the current dirty Australian voluntary standard – an attempt was made to lower this in 2007 but this failed because of industry opposition.

According to a paper prepared by economic and environment consultants commissioned by the Dept of Environment in 2006 (just before the attempt to lower the standard)the value of health benefits of reducing pollution from wood heaters by moving to a standard closer to that permitted in NZ would be $1billion (BDA Group).

See http://www.environment.gov.au/atmosphere/airquality/publications/pubs/wood-particle-emissions.pdf

As for a description of medical issues behind these costs see the paper by the respiratory specialist Dr Markos who points out that the health effects of wood smoke have been shown consistently by several studies.

The levels in summer are usually 1 – 20 micrograms per cubic metre of air per day (ug/m3). The studies have shown that for every rise of 10 ug/m3 of daily particle concentrations, there is an increase of:
• 1% of daily deaths from all causes,
• 3% of daily deaths from lung causes,
• 3% of daily admissions to hospital for lung disease, and
• 3% of daily lung symptoms in the general population.

High particle levels (over 50 ug/m3) are consistently recorded on many winter days in Launceston, Canberra & Armidale.

See http://www.lungfoundation.com.au/lung-information/patient-educational-material/fact-sheets/100-health-impacts-of-wood-smoke.

As for carcinogens, see page 14 of this paper by the Washington Dept of Ecology
http://www.ecy.wa.gov/pubs/92046.pdf . Of particular concern is the fact that it contains a severe mutagen (polycylic aromatic hydrocarbons) which cause cancer and birth defects.

Nor can you keep this pollution out of yours or your neighbours houses as the emission particles are too small to be stopped by windows or doors. You breathe them in without knowing it and there are plenty of references for that.

It’s no joke. We shouldn’t be using wood heaters in built up areas…

Where did you source this poorly researched, non scientific based opinion from? This is almost like Today Tonight, but in RiotACT form.

Go away.

My rental property has a wood heater, and I have access to wood. So I’ll use it on those cold nights.

This seems to be a problem confined to Tuggers. Should people in other areas of Canberra feel guilty for wood heating? I am seriously considering installing one in my house.

Do you have any reputable source proving that wood smoke from heaters is carcinogenic? Of course if you happened to stick your head inside the heater and breathed the smoke continuously for months, you could receive a dangerous dose, but with the wood heater technology nowadays there should be little or no smoke released inside the house, and what is released outside will be diluted enough to cause little trouble.

Also, if you were to use treated pine there could be some safety issues, but most people use eucalypt. And, your problem with sustainability has nothing to do with wood fireplaces, as you will find that the majority of wood collected is from trees which are felled either naturally or for reasons other than sourcing firewood and firewood is just an added benefit.

i have a fireplace and will be disgusted if the gov try and force me to stop using it. it’s my home, i choose to heat it. go away

There are far fewer than there were 10 years ago and no one died from smoke inhalation 10 years ago.

Perhaps you could pay for them to get central gas heating?

Tablespoon of cement?