Need To Legislate End To Wood Smoke-Letter to the Editor

Paddock Publications
Daily Herald Newspaper
Letters to the Editor
Neighborhood-Fence Post

Published: 1/7/2008

Need To Legislate End To Wood Smoke

To the editor: The legend goes that Nero played his lyre as the Great Fire of Rome burned.

Sadly, our local and state leaders are acting like Nero, without the lyre, when it comes to wood smoke emissions -- ignoring the scientific fact that wood smoke is not only harmful to all who involuntarily breathe it but deadly to more than 30,000 Americans each year.

America and Illinois are being overwhelmed by wood smoke particulates. An EPA report states that sources of particulate pollution (national average) are residential wood burning, 35 percent; forest fires, 13 percent; autos and trucks, 21 percent; other residential fuels, 1 percent and other sources, 30 percent.

Legislation must stop the unneeded and unnecessary destruction of our environment and ensure all residents have the right to breathe healthy air, by banning outdoor, wood burning fireplaces, fire pits, outside wood boilers, chimineas and burn barrels.

Local and state government should support, with grants, the voluntary conversion of all inside residential wood burning fireplaces to natural gas or electric.

Wood smoke from neighbors' fires will enter your home even with windows and doors closed. The pollution levels inside your closed home can be up to 70 percent of the levels outdoors.

Children, the elderly, pregnant women and people with respiratory ailments are especially susceptible. 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.

If your mom, grandpa or sister lived near you and they were getting sick from the emissions from your wood fireplace, would you tell them to be quiet or move? I'll bet you wouldn't. You would stop burning. Does your neighbors' health mean less to you?

Some have suggested when illness occurs to people due to wood smoke, the locally elected officials and the wood burner should be called. Why? So they can help take you or your child to the doctor/hospital for medical treatment, and to pay the bill.

Breathe healthy air free of wood smoke in 2008? Speak up ... or hold your breath! Your choice.


Elk Grove Village, Illinois