Economics: Burning Solid Fuels is False Economy

Economics: Burning Solid Fuels is False Economy

From----THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF QUANTIFIABLE OZONE AND PM10 RELATED HEALTH EFFECTS IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA

From....."http://burningissues.org/car-www/science/
abstracts/econstdy.htm"


Jane Hall, Kleinman, Fairley, Brajer, The Institute for Economic and Environmental Studies, California State University, Fullerton, CA 92634, October 1994; To order call ,BAAQMD (415) 771-6000: San Francisco, CA USA. p. 80 pages. This entry is the executive summary from the Final Report to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) of the extensive costs associated with fine particulate pollution and by implication - wood smoke.) The report estimates the cost of PM10 pollution in the Bay Area to be $2 billion. Order the entire paper from the BAAQMD.

Annual cost of not reducing PM10 (Particulate matter smaller than 10 microns)in the San Francisco Bay Area: $2.1 Billion and 1,098 deaths.Health cost of wood burning alone is $1.1 Billion. Cost of 1 fire to society: $40. (20 pounds wood)

Reducing Ozone is expensive, reducing fine particulate by stopping wood fires in all their forms would be almost free. (Cost to reduce ozone in the San Francisco Bay Area: $1 billion with health savings of $5.3 million.) "Simply banning or limiting wood fires could potentially save many lives at little or no cost" (Fairley, 1994).

Are we as a nation pursuing a false economy regardless of the price? We have spent billions cleaning up autos and factories while the most polluting of available home energy sources, wood combustion has remained untouched. Trees are a sacred cash cow. We all love to gaze into a fire 'and loose ourselves' but at what cost?

We take forest fires seriously. We don't like homes or people being incinerated. Yet the press never mentions the severe health effects of breathing the smoky air that blankets a fire in action. (President Clinton authorized $2.9 billion up from $1.8 billion in 2000 to fight US forest fires summer 2001. President Bush in August, 2001 committed billions to a ten year plan to prevent forest fires.) Yet as a country the US has not chosen to encourage clean air for its citizens.

For our study area of San Francisco $1 billion is spent each year on regulations to reduce ozone which is worst in the summer. The 1994 Fullerton San Francisco Bay Area Economic Report (Hall, 1995) estimates that $5.3 million in health benefits will result from these smog-reducing controls. The value of successful cleanup of car pollution for this area is attributed with yearly health savings of $604 million.
It estimates that the yearly loss to the Bay Area from PM2.5 pollution is $2.1 billion. The cost of wood burning was $1.1 billion per year. Fewer than 15% of the population burning wood for home heating and ambiance, costs six million people both in health, well being and quality of life but also in real dollars. Each pound of wood burned costs the entire community $2 in increased medical costs and lost work days. That is equivalent to $40 for an average fire burning 20 pounds of wood. "Simply banning or limiting wood fires could potentially save many lives at little or no cost" (Fairley, 1994).

The question that we must face is why the government and our "Air Quality Districts" and Environmental Agencies refuse to clear our air with the most cost effective decisions. Medical costs continue to increase. Why not decrease pollution to promote better health as the Fullerton study recommends? It is cheaper to be well.
What is our habit of solid fuel combustion costing us? Who is footing the bill? Some hidden costs of wood heat are increased neighborhood pollution levels resulting in suburban corridors of illness, lost wages, lost school time and sudden death. Let's look at the human and dollar cost and the value of raw wood in several ways.

The Added Value of Manufacturing Wood Products
Wood burning is big business but it could be argued that wood is too valuable to burn. In North Carolina, 4th largest wood producer in the US, manufacturing wood products provides 145,000 people jobs with an annual payroll of $3.5 billion. Similar figures were not available on the web for the politically embattled California Timber Industry, which is the largest state wood producer.North Carolina lists for us what we could do with a cord of wood.

By manufacturing wood products we increase jobs and add value to our natural resources. We increase our productivity as a nation. Wood builds houses, fences, salad bowls, furniture, kitchen cabinets, musical instruments and much more. Value is added to the raw wood. A cord of wood may be just the cost of labor, gasoline, chain saw supplies and hauling (called free wood in the US) or as much as $400. Burn it up and it is gone. It turns into a small amount of heat and a large amount of air pollution that will set up a value lost equation.

1 cord of wood is 8 feet by 4 feet by 4 feet
Value in what it can produce:
30 Boston rockers (chairs) or
12 dining room tables that each seat eight people or
1,200 copies of National Geographic magazine or
61,370 No. 10 envelopes or
460,000 personal checks or
1,000 to 2,000 pounds of paper (depending on the process used) or
89,870 sheets of letterhead bond paper or
942 one-pound books or
4,384,000 commemorative-size postage stamps or
7,500,000 toothpicks

What is Solid Fuel Combustion Costing Us?
"The alleged popularity and benefit of heating with wood or other solid fuels is simply not justified by the expense, detrimental health impacts of "second hand" wood smoke, fire hazards, and poor heating performance of wood stoves. Newspapers & magazines as well as movies & television that promote the use of wood stoves and fireplaces as being romantic and natural do not responsibly present the detrimental health and safety ramifications of heating with solid fuels nor do they discuss more cost-effective alternatives that would promote improved energy conservation, health and safety. (Freedman, 2001)."In most areas of California you will pay more to heat with wood than to heat with gas. CA ARB, 2001"

For our study area of San Francisco $1 billion is spent each year on regulations to reduce ozone which is worst in the summer. The 1994 Fullerton San Francisco Bay Area Economic Report (Hall, 1995) estimates that $5.3 million in health benefits will result from these smog-reducing controls. The value of successful cleanup of car pollution for this area is attributed with yearly health savings of $604 million.

It estimates that the yearly loss to the Bay Area from PM2.5 pollution is $2.1 billion. The cost of wood burning was $1.1 billion per year. 15% of the population burning wood for home heating and ambiance, costs six million people both in health, well being and quality of life but also in real dollars. Each pound of wood burned costs the entire community $2 in increased medical costs and lost work days. That is equivalent to $40 for an average fire burning 20 pounds of wood. "Simply banning or limiting wood fires could potentially save many lives at little or no cost" (Fairley, 1994).

The question that we must face is why the government and our "Air Quality Districts" and Environmental Agencies refuse to clear our air with the most cost effective decisions.

Medical costs continue to increase. Why not decrease pollution to promote better health as the Fullerton study recommends? It is cheaper to be well.

Perception is Everything
A rhapsody on wax logs: "They could see the white suburbs with their twinkling lights and swimming pools, the sprawling black townships, covered by a murky coating of smoke from a multitude of paraffin and wood fires, the long, flat roads radiation out to all corners and the bleak dirt mounds, the discarded debris of the race for South Africa's gold." (EVERY SECRET THING , My Family, My Country Gillian Slovo Little, Brown, and CO. PP 282,.P.133)

Timber companies are selling wood for burning and sawdust and paper garbage as wax sawdust logs and compressed pellets. The sawdust logs and pellets are sold as less polluting. They are actually expensive and polluting. The quote from G. Slovo, above, shows a different attitude in other parts of the world.

Below is a quote from New York State - it is talking about the stench of pig farms but it could be translated to Napa county, California with it's cows and it's choking wood smoke. In fact methane, ammonia and wood smoke are a quality of life issue all around the country.

"You like to think of a wine region as something that's a little bit more upscale, and it's kind of hard to be upscale if the air doesn't smell too good." -ANNE PARKER, a tourism official in New York's Finger Lakes region, on the area's growing hog industry. (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/12/nyregion/12PIGS.html?todaysheadlines)
At last an Iowa Senator proposed a tax credit for collecting and using agricultural methane as a fuel this year. (Chinese farmers collect and use methane fuel.) Conserving energy is saving money and saving the environment. Methane burns much cleaner than wood.

Consumer Reports, February 2002 (updated costs: see Engineer 2007)

Up in smoke
How economical is heating with wood? Split wood sells for roughly $150 a cord (delivered). If it's a true cord--a stack 8 feet long, 4 feet deep, and 4 feet high--the price is 40 percent cheaper than natural gas or fuel oil for equivalent energy, national average prices suggest. A "cord run," however, is a single stack of 16-inch logs that is one-third the volume of a true cord. A $150 cord run is 75 percent pricier than other heating fuels, assuming the stack of hardwood is 70 percent solid, contains 12 percent moisture, and provides 7,700 Btu/lb.
Burning wood can be inefficient. At best, 25 to 30 percent of the heat energy from a wood-burning fireplace goes toward warming the room. The rest is lost up the chimney. A fireplace insert or a wood stove might reach 70 percent efficiency, but you lose the coziness of the fire. By contrast, a new gas or oil boiler or a furnace is 80 percent efficient or more. Bottom line: A central heating system is typically the cheapest way to heat.

From....."http://burningissues.org/car-www/science/
abstracts/econstdy.htm"

WOOD SMOKE POLLUTION IS A NEIGHBORHOOD AIR QUALITY PROBLEM

Yolo Clean Air
2736 Brentwood Place, Davis, CA 95616
Phone & Fax: 530-758-5173

www.yolocleanair.org

About Yolo Clean Air
Yolo Clean Air is a California non-profit organization located in Davis, California. Our Mission is solely focused on improving air quality for the benefit of environmentally sensitive and susceptible individuals suffering from respiratory health problems - particularly children and seniors. We seek to identify and then provide the most practical, attainable, minimally-disruptive, and cost-effective solutions for the most pressing air quality problems. By merging consumer education and/or public behavioral changes with innovative, science-based, technology we seek to create near-term, sustainable environment changes that benefit the community.


WOOD SMOKE POLLUTION IS A NEIGHBORHOOD AIR QUALITY PROBLEM

Why Should You be Worried about Wood Smoke in Your Neighborhood?
“Residential wood combustion creates soot or carbon formed by incomplete combustion which is lifted into the air. These particles are sometimes 2.5 to 10 micrometers in size (PM10) but are more often less than 2.5 micrometers in size (PM2.5)” (Quote from Reference 1).
“Both PM10 and PM2.5 create health problems related to their ability to penetrate deep into our respiratory system. A number of health studies have established a direct correlation between elevated particulate levels and increased mortality” (Quote from Reference 1).

“Children, the elderly, pregnant women and people with respiratory ailments are especially susceptible. Among the health impacts are premature death; respiratory-related hospital admissions; aggravated asthma; acute respiratory symptoms, including aggravated coughing and difficult breathing; chronic bronchitis; and decreased lung function that can be experienced as shortness of breath” (Quote from Reference 1).

“Even if you don’t burn wood, studies have shown that wood smoke from neighbors’ fires can enter your home. Smoke particles are so small they can seep into a home with closed windows and doors. The pollution levels inside a closed home can be up to 70 percent of the levels outdoors” (Quote from Reference 1).

“Almost half of our particulate matter pollution comes from wood burning fireplaces. For folks with asthma, this can be life-threatening” (Quote from Reference 2).

"This (wood smoke) is basically the worst pollution in terms of its health impacts. It has been linked to more than 5,000 premature deaths per year in Southern California” (Quote from Reference 3). Extrapolated from a Southern California population of 20,000,000, this predicts that wood smoke pollution will cause between 12-13 additional premature deaths each year in a city with a population of 50,000. (Please go to their web site to read the rest of the article)

NOTE----The above is only the first part of this great article. Please go to their web site…www.yolocleanair.org to read the complete article

Ban Outdoor Wood-Burning Fireplaces and Fire Pits=Letter to Editor

November 5, 2007
Neighborhood Fencepost
Letter to the Editor
Daily Herald
Paddock Publications
Arlington Heights, IL.

Elk Grove Should Ban Outdoor Pits

Because we are supporters of the Breathe Healthy Air Coalition, my wife and I attended the Elk Grove Village Board meeting on October 9. Three passionate, informative testimonies were given to respectfully ask the board of trustees to seriously consider reinstating the ban on outdoor fireplaces and fire pits.

Wood smoke emissions are harmful to the air we all need to breathe and even more harmful to our health and quality of life. No one should have to leave their back yard and close the windows in their home (which does not help!) to try to avoid the wood smoke emissions drifting through the neighborhood and involuntarily into our lungs.

All towns-including Arlington Heights-should ban all outdoor fire places and fire pits.

Arlington Hts, Illinois