Lobbying to stop the proliferation of wood stoves and fireplaces

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.

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