This is the letter that was sent to the New York Times regarding this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/garden/26firepit.html?ref=garden
Regarding the article by Kimberly Stevens,
The statement "outdoor fireplaces offer an inexpensive and low-maintenance way to extend living and social spaces outdoors, especially at night when the mercury drops." perhaps should have been omitted as it leads to the notion that having an outdoor fireplace shows elegance in your way of living. This may encourage those, that cannot afford what Doug Armstrong and Maureen FitzPatrick have done, to do something along the same idea and use wood as fuel.
Poor air quality and pollution is a serious problem that requires the cooperation and effort of everyone. Just one important contributor to air pollution is often ignored. Residential wood burning produces fine particles and gases that contain a multitude of toxic substances and carcinogens.
Wood smoke is chemically active in the body 40 times longer than tobacco smoke and contains 12 times the amount of carcinogens and is more likely to cause cancer than the same amount of tobacco smoke, according to J. Lewtas-USEPA.
Fireplaces are ineffective in heating a home, and only a few hours of wood burning in a single home can drastically raise fine particle concentrations in dozens of surrounding homes throughout the neighbourhood. None of us are protected from this toxic smoke.
Burning wood and allowing it to foul the air of your neighbors is a rude and unnecessary assault on their senses. It causes many people, especially the young, the elderly and those with respiratory problems to be put in great physical danger.
I’ve had people tell me that they believe wood burning is safe as our forefathers heated that way. My response to them is that our forefathers had no other options. Also, many of them died at a very early age of ‘undetermined’ causes. Today, we know that some of those premature deaths most likely were from inhaling particulate matter, leading to various conditions that can result in death.
Burning wood is a costly and filthy affront to all that are invaded by it. Exposure to the smoke is extremely uncomfortable and causes burning eyes, dry and sore throat, irritation of the nasal passages, cardiovascular system damage, causes some types of cancer and brain damage, headaches, and allergic reactions, among other symptoms.
When smoke is prevalent in the area, people cannot open their windows for fresh air, because there is none. They cannot enjoy their own property due to the stench. Everyone should be able to relax in their own homes without the fear that they are being contaminated by toxic smoke. It is an environmental right of all people.
I can tell you first-hand what it is like when one is forced to deal with a smoke issue, as I have lived through it. Our ordeal began in 2002, when a neighbour began using a wood stove. We finally were forced from our home, by the smoke, for nearly 8 months. We now have an Interlocutory Injunction that was obtained in May of 2005 , after which we returned home to begin the cleanup and sanitization of the entire house. An expensive and exhausting mission.
I can tell you that the stench permeates your entire home, your clothing, your hair, and you can even taste it. Exposure to the smoke was extremely uncomfortable and caused burning eyes, dry throat, irritation of the nasal passages and headaches. When the smoke stopped, so did the symptoms.
There was no relief by opening windows because the acrid smells were like a fog covering our house. Buying expensive air cleaners did nothing to remove the odors.
There was no enjoying the deck and yard as long as the wood burning stove was in operation.
We were fortunate enough to have the means to seek legal help. There were no authorities that were of any help in getting the smoke stopped. What would happen to those that cannot afford legal help? Would they be forced to move out of their homes? Could they afford to do that? Would they be able to sell their home when a potential buyer saw or smelled the smoke? Or, would they have to remain in their homes with their children and become sick? It's a thought that is very disturbing to me.
I think it is high time that all municipalities give some thought to banning all wood burning in residential areas. Some have already begun to do just that! I fail to see how the public interest is served by permitting the unnecessary fouling of the air we all have the need to breathe.
Please do all you can to prevent environmental and health problems for everyone today and for future generations. There are many people currently dealing with wood burners that just will not stop burning until taken to court. This is a lengthy and expensive procedure that punishes, even further, the innocent victim of the wood smoke who has been suffering for some time already with the loss of the enjoyment of their property and the health effects of the smoke that filters into their home.
If laws were in place to ban wood burning the world would be a healthier place for all of us!
For more information, please go to www.woodburnersmoke.net and www.burningissues.org
Shirley Brandie
Canadian Regional Director Clean Air Revival, Inc.
http://burningissues.org
http://woodburnersmoke.net
Wood-burning stoves: Smoke-related complaints, health problems on the rise
Monday, February 23, 2009
Wood-burning stoves: Smoke-related complaints, health problems on the rise
By David Funkhouser | Tribune Newspapers
February 22, 2009
HARTFORD, Conn. — Jodi Blanco said she never got sick until her neighbor installed a wood-burning stove a few years ago.
Now she has been ill for more than a month, she wakes up coughing in her sleep, and her two young children are plagued by breathing problems.
But she can't get anyone to do anything about it, and she's not alone.
"My daughter missed a whole week of school, and my son has a continual runny nose and watery eyes, and he's complaining he doesn't feel good all the time," said Blanco of East Windsor, Conn. "When I open the bay window in front, I can smell the smoke. It's coming in my house, and it's making us sick."
An increasing number of people are firing up wood stoves, furnaces and fireplaces as a hedge against rising heating bills, but wood fuel, steeped in history and romance, has become a health hazard for many.
Even though the number of complaints is growing, the laws regarding wood-burning devices are limited, and there has been little that health and environmental officials can do.
For all the poetry and nostalgia surrounding fireplaces and wood stoves, their smoke is loaded with toxic compounds and particles that have been associated with cancer and severe respiratory problems.
States nationwide are reacting, in some cases banning wood burning entirely on days when air quality is poor. That can happen in the winter when temperature inversions—cold air staying close to the ground below warmer air above—keep polluted air from dispersing.
The worst offenders are outdoor wood furnaces, which typically produce a dirtier smoke than wood and pellet stoves. The units are supposed to be at least 200 feet from other homes and have a smokestack higher than surrounding rooftops, and owners are only supposed to burn clean wood.
John Tarquinio, owner of Fireside Supply in Hebron, Conn., said stove and furnace sales shot up in 2008 when fuel prices spiked. He agreed that misuse can be a problem.
"It needs to be regulated, to be looked at. It needs to be cleaned up," he said.
When Dorothy Alderman and her husband moved to Andover Lake, just a few people among her 100 or so neighbors burned wood, and then only occasionally. A few years ago, that started to change.
"One day, I saw 26 houses with smoke coming out," Alderman said. "It's not just, 'Let's make a fire on the weekend,' it's all the time."
The smoke began to bother her and eventually led to a permanent medical condition, parosmia, in which her sense of smell is so damaged that she cannot stand even slight hints of smoke.
In 2006, after 20 years on the lake, she and her husband decided to move. Now they live in Hebron, which has banned the installation of outdoor wood furnaces.
The Hartford Courant
By David Funkhouser | Tribune Newspapers
February 22, 2009
HARTFORD, Conn. — Jodi Blanco said she never got sick until her neighbor installed a wood-burning stove a few years ago.
Now she has been ill for more than a month, she wakes up coughing in her sleep, and her two young children are plagued by breathing problems.
But she can't get anyone to do anything about it, and she's not alone.
"My daughter missed a whole week of school, and my son has a continual runny nose and watery eyes, and he's complaining he doesn't feel good all the time," said Blanco of East Windsor, Conn. "When I open the bay window in front, I can smell the smoke. It's coming in my house, and it's making us sick."
An increasing number of people are firing up wood stoves, furnaces and fireplaces as a hedge against rising heating bills, but wood fuel, steeped in history and romance, has become a health hazard for many.
Even though the number of complaints is growing, the laws regarding wood-burning devices are limited, and there has been little that health and environmental officials can do.
For all the poetry and nostalgia surrounding fireplaces and wood stoves, their smoke is loaded with toxic compounds and particles that have been associated with cancer and severe respiratory problems.
States nationwide are reacting, in some cases banning wood burning entirely on days when air quality is poor. That can happen in the winter when temperature inversions—cold air staying close to the ground below warmer air above—keep polluted air from dispersing.
The worst offenders are outdoor wood furnaces, which typically produce a dirtier smoke than wood and pellet stoves. The units are supposed to be at least 200 feet from other homes and have a smokestack higher than surrounding rooftops, and owners are only supposed to burn clean wood.
John Tarquinio, owner of Fireside Supply in Hebron, Conn., said stove and furnace sales shot up in 2008 when fuel prices spiked. He agreed that misuse can be a problem.
"It needs to be regulated, to be looked at. It needs to be cleaned up," he said.
When Dorothy Alderman and her husband moved to Andover Lake, just a few people among her 100 or so neighbors burned wood, and then only occasionally. A few years ago, that started to change.
"One day, I saw 26 houses with smoke coming out," Alderman said. "It's not just, 'Let's make a fire on the weekend,' it's all the time."
The smoke began to bother her and eventually led to a permanent medical condition, parosmia, in which her sense of smell is so damaged that she cannot stand even slight hints of smoke.
In 2006, after 20 years on the lake, she and her husband decided to move. Now they live in Hebron, which has banned the installation of outdoor wood furnaces.
The Hartford Courant
Trespassing wood smoke a threat to health, safety
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel
02/19/2009
Trespassing wood smoke a threat to health, safety
Since the Morning Sentinel did not see fit to have a reporter at the Oakland Town Council meeting on Feb. 11, I thought I would share some thoughts regarding the unsatisfactory outcome of that meeting.
Some residents of Oakland are being made miserable by wood smoke discharged in a residential area. The council denied authority to deal with the nuisance circumstance.
The nuisance wood smoke is a real threat to the health and safety of the residents to the west of the old Cascade mill. Unfortunately, it has not been treated as such by the town council or agencies of state, namely the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Health and Human Services.
I was most impressed by the quality and seriousness of testimony by residents, one whose family had to abandon their home and another who can't do simple yard work and once even thought her house was on fire and the American Lung Association representative present.
That a clear and present danger exists from this smoke trespass is inarguable. The council seemed impatient with testimony and, in my opinion, did not grasp the seriousness of the issue or the desperate need for help of those people directly affected by the smoke.
We are all placed in danger when the agencies of our elected government chartered to protect us fail to act when needed in a timely manner.
Jim Easton
Oakland
See one reader comments below....
cracklinRose
Feb 19, 2009 9:41 PM
I will never understand the mentality of some people. Wood smoke is a danger to human health & the environment. It is a proven fact. Yet, the answers posted to this letter appear to be written by people who just like to read a letter and then inject their inane responses. How about learning some true facts before showing yourselves to be complete idiots?
If you were forced from your home, as I was, I bet you'd be singing another tune!
http://woodburnersmoke.net Look under photos & videos and tell me that you would put up with it?
Trespass of smoke is against the law as our neighbor has found out. So, go ahead & do like him and you won't be telling anyone to leave town...it will likely be you, broke and heading to the poor house!
Copyright © 2003- 2009 Blethen Maine Newspapers, Inc.
02/19/2009
Trespassing wood smoke a threat to health, safety
Since the Morning Sentinel did not see fit to have a reporter at the Oakland Town Council meeting on Feb. 11, I thought I would share some thoughts regarding the unsatisfactory outcome of that meeting.
Some residents of Oakland are being made miserable by wood smoke discharged in a residential area. The council denied authority to deal with the nuisance circumstance.
The nuisance wood smoke is a real threat to the health and safety of the residents to the west of the old Cascade mill. Unfortunately, it has not been treated as such by the town council or agencies of state, namely the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Health and Human Services.
I was most impressed by the quality and seriousness of testimony by residents, one whose family had to abandon their home and another who can't do simple yard work and once even thought her house was on fire and the American Lung Association representative present.
That a clear and present danger exists from this smoke trespass is inarguable. The council seemed impatient with testimony and, in my opinion, did not grasp the seriousness of the issue or the desperate need for help of those people directly affected by the smoke.
We are all placed in danger when the agencies of our elected government chartered to protect us fail to act when needed in a timely manner.
Jim Easton
Oakland
See one reader comments below....
cracklinRose
Feb 19, 2009 9:41 PM
I will never understand the mentality of some people. Wood smoke is a danger to human health & the environment. It is a proven fact. Yet, the answers posted to this letter appear to be written by people who just like to read a letter and then inject their inane responses. How about learning some true facts before showing yourselves to be complete idiots?
If you were forced from your home, as I was, I bet you'd be singing another tune!
http://woodburnersmoke.net Look under photos & videos and tell me that you would put up with it?
Trespass of smoke is against the law as our neighbor has found out. So, go ahead & do like him and you won't be telling anyone to leave town...it will likely be you, broke and heading to the poor house!
Copyright © 2003- 2009 Blethen Maine Newspapers, Inc.
Lobbying to stop the proliferation of wood stoves and fireplaces
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
The Gazette
Montrealers won't rush to give up fireplace use
February 9, 2009
The chilly depths of this winter of long nights and freezing temperatures is perhaps not the ideal moment for the city of Montreal to suggest to residents that they stop lighting their wood stoves and fireplaces. Fireplaces have been a source of heat and comfort and pleasure for humankind since prehistory.
Unfortunately, however, research has found that in a city the size of Montreal, with its large number of wood stoves and fireplaces, the solid particles all those fires emit into the air are very bad for people's health.
As the number of wood-burning stoves and fireplaces increases in the Montreal area so, too, does smog. This is a development health officials say is leading to between 15 to 40 premature deaths a year from respiratory illness linked to air pollution.
Alan DeSousa, the city executive committee's environment man, has been lobbying to stop the proliferation of wood stoves and fireplaces. On Feb. 23, the city will table a bylaw banning the installation of new wood stoves or fireplaces. Montreal will be Canada's first big city to do this.
"Wood is looked at as a natural substance and cozy and comfortable," said DeSousa. "In the country, it's not a problem, but in the city it's too concentrated." There are an estimated 50,000 wood-burning stoves and fireplaces in Montreal and 35,000 more elsewhere on the island, and thousands more in the off-island suburbs. Environment Canada says a single wood stove burning for nine hours emits as much pollution as a car would in a year.
Among scientists, there is little doubt about the role clean air plays in health. A recent U.S. study found that cleaner air in recent decades has given the average American five more months of life.
DeSousa concedes that a ban on new fireplaces and stoves will not reduce the current level of woodfire pollution. He does hope, however, to change the behaviour of those whose homes already have one or the other.
This will prove, we think, to be a much bigger challenge than the city foresees.
DeSousa said the city is trying a three-pronged approach : First, informing the public of the health dangers; next, the planned bylaw against new stoves and fireplaces, and finally an effort to persuade the province, and possibly Ottawa, to pay to help people convert from wood to less polluting - if less charming - forms of warmth, such as natural gas and electricity.
That three-pronged attack is the standard approach to changing public behaviour, but in this case we think it will be easier to say than to do. The idea is not to send "smoke police" prowling our neighbourhoods to bust up romantic evenings to hand out tickets, but rather to get people to use their fireplaces less. Nor does he cut any slack for owners of modern, high-efficiency woodstoves.
DeSousa says he knows that even with public co-operation, the city can do little against woodsmoke pollution. Considering those realities, this whole project will seem to many people to be more than a little Quixotic.
Woodsmoke is a health hazard. But this problem might prove to be less manageable than city hall seems to anticipate. Fire has been a part of human households for a long long time.
© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette
Montrealers won't rush to give up fireplace use
February 9, 2009
The chilly depths of this winter of long nights and freezing temperatures is perhaps not the ideal moment for the city of Montreal to suggest to residents that they stop lighting their wood stoves and fireplaces. Fireplaces have been a source of heat and comfort and pleasure for humankind since prehistory.
Unfortunately, however, research has found that in a city the size of Montreal, with its large number of wood stoves and fireplaces, the solid particles all those fires emit into the air are very bad for people's health.
As the number of wood-burning stoves and fireplaces increases in the Montreal area so, too, does smog. This is a development health officials say is leading to between 15 to 40 premature deaths a year from respiratory illness linked to air pollution.
Alan DeSousa, the city executive committee's environment man, has been lobbying to stop the proliferation of wood stoves and fireplaces. On Feb. 23, the city will table a bylaw banning the installation of new wood stoves or fireplaces. Montreal will be Canada's first big city to do this.
"Wood is looked at as a natural substance and cozy and comfortable," said DeSousa. "In the country, it's not a problem, but in the city it's too concentrated." There are an estimated 50,000 wood-burning stoves and fireplaces in Montreal and 35,000 more elsewhere on the island, and thousands more in the off-island suburbs. Environment Canada says a single wood stove burning for nine hours emits as much pollution as a car would in a year.
Among scientists, there is little doubt about the role clean air plays in health. A recent U.S. study found that cleaner air in recent decades has given the average American five more months of life.
DeSousa concedes that a ban on new fireplaces and stoves will not reduce the current level of woodfire pollution. He does hope, however, to change the behaviour of those whose homes already have one or the other.
This will prove, we think, to be a much bigger challenge than the city foresees.
DeSousa said the city is trying a three-pronged approach : First, informing the public of the health dangers; next, the planned bylaw against new stoves and fireplaces, and finally an effort to persuade the province, and possibly Ottawa, to pay to help people convert from wood to less polluting - if less charming - forms of warmth, such as natural gas and electricity.
That three-pronged attack is the standard approach to changing public behaviour, but in this case we think it will be easier to say than to do. The idea is not to send "smoke police" prowling our neighbourhoods to bust up romantic evenings to hand out tickets, but rather to get people to use their fireplaces less. Nor does he cut any slack for owners of modern, high-efficiency woodstoves.
DeSousa says he knows that even with public co-operation, the city can do little against woodsmoke pollution. Considering those realities, this whole project will seem to many people to be more than a little Quixotic.
Woodsmoke is a health hazard. But this problem might prove to be less manageable than city hall seems to anticipate. Fire has been a part of human households for a long long time.
© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette
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