Question from Nancy
Thank you for your website. I have learned so much from your web pages, including how to make the best Magic Disappearing Chocolate Fudge!
Eighteen years ago my next door neighbor burned his shake roof in his fireplace. It’s wood, so that’s perfectly legal in California. He made so many people very sick and permanently damaged the lungs of a small grandchild that was living with us. I found it so annoying but had no idea of how much long term damage this can cause children. It’s pretty hard to stuff a small baby with greens.
Now I have a neighbor a half block away that burns wood even when it is 80 degrees out. I thought you might be interested in this letter from Jenny Bard, director of Clean Air Programs for the American Lung Association of California in Santa Rosa. She has given her permission to reproduce it. In addition you might try to google [wood smoke brain]. I think you will be very interested. She is working for a state law against wood burning, and I think a federal law might be even better.
N a n c y
By Jenny Bard
Is there any sight more comforting on a cold winter evening than a roaring fireplace?
Debra’s Answer
Thanks for sending this article, Nancy.
It brings up a dichotomy I want to comment on.
First, I completely agree that wood smoke can be harmful to health. And, at the same time, wood has been burning on this planet since the beginning of trees, some millions of years ago, being set afire by lightning strikes.
We have a tendency in our culture to think of things in good/bad opposites, such as wood smoke is harmful, so wood shouldn’t be burned, rather than looking at a bigger picture though the lens of appropriate use.
The thing about wood smoke–which is true for every pollutant and poison, by the way–is that the degree of harm depends largely on the concentration of the pollutant in the air. It has long been known that wood smoke can be deadly, as people have been dying from smoke inhalation in fires for millenia. What is new here, I think, is to realize that the concentration of particulates in wood smoke in fireplaces is enough to cause harm to health.
Another concentration issue is how much wood is being burned in how many fireplaces or wood stoves within a particular area. If everybody living in an enclosed canyon, for example, heated with wood, it would get pretty smoky. A cabin surrounded by twenty miles of uninhabited land could burn with wood and the concentration of pollutants in the air would be so dilute it would be appropraite to heat with wood.
