The Wood Smoke Activist
January 2010 Newsletter
Educating the world about the health and climate impacts of wood smoke and combustion aerosols.
Editor: Shirley Brandie
1/1/2010
Editorial
Now that winter is upon us many people are suffering greatly from the effects of wood smoke that is invading their homes. Instead of looking out the windows at glistening white snow instead they see dark speckles on the snow, those speckles being output from neighboring wood smoke. I remember it vividly as our snow was speckled also up until the burning was ended.
Not only that, what they see out their windows is clouds of wood smoke of varying colors , the colors depending on what is being burned at the time, surrounding the neighborhood.
Not a beautiful winter holiday scene at all. Can you imagine a Season’s Greetings card with a scene like that imprinted on it?
Now that their hopes for that beautiful special holiday scene are dashed, once again by the neighbor’s “need to burn”, they decide that the stench and irritating fumes are just too much to impose on their guests and give up the idea of a family get-together in their home again this year.
They busy themselves with trying to find something that will get the stench out of their house so that they can try to make the best of it. Nothing works and depression sets in.
In this day and age it is beyond belief that there are people that, even when they have been made aware of the discomfort they are causing with their wood burning, continue to stoke that burner and fumigate the neighbors.
For as many years as I have been researching the psyches of burners, I have not come up with why they have the need to hurt others. I know it is there but I can’t put my finger on it yet. Some have suggested pyromania, control issues, mental illnesses and even a wood fetish.
They say that you cannot help someone if they don’t think they need help. But we must not forget that we are the victims of their smoke. And, we don’t like to be thought of as victims. We are stronger than that! We will fight for our right to breathe fresh air in our own homes and yards!
This is a goal for all of us at the start of a brand new year. Let’s make 2010 the year we take back the air!
Shirley
The Wood Smoke Activist
January 2010 Newsletter
Educating the world about the health and climate impacts of wood smoke and combustion aerosols.
Editor: Shirley Brandie
1/1/2010
Shirley Brandie
http://WoodBurnerSmoke.net
Ontario Director of Canadian Clean Air Alliance
http://www.canadiancleanairalliance.ca
Ban sought on outdoor wood furnaces
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
New Haven Register---Connecticut
Published: Wednesday, January 6, 2010
By Randall Beach, Register Staff
The president of a local environmental group is pressing state legislators to support her organization’s call for a law banning outdoor wood-burning furnaces and adding the words “wood smoke” to the state Public Health Nuisance Code.
Nancy Alderman of North Haven, who heads Environment and Human Health Inc., is optimistic both proposals will win passage during the legislative session that begins next month.
Alderman said adding “wood smoke” to the nuisance code would protect any residents receiving wood smoke in their homes from neighbors.
The sources would include outdoor pits or burners, indoor stoves or even outdoor brush-burning.
“It would cover anything that enters somebody’s house from a neighbor on a continual basis,” she said.
If such a law existed, she noted, local health departments could order the offending neighbor to stop burning.
Last April this legislative proposal passed the Public Health Committee by a large margin but was defeated in the Environment Committee.
Alderman said it failed because state health officials mistakenly believed a case in the Trumbull-Monroe health district made the proposed law unnecessary.
A health officer there had issued a cease and desist order against a burner and the order was upheld by the state Department of Public Health. But Alderman said state officials later learned the new legal precedent merely meant local health officials “may” issue such orders but don’t have to do so.
Alderman said if the proposal became law, local health officials would be mandated to issue such orders against burners who are affecting their neighbors.
Alderman plans to meet next Monday with the co-chairmen of the state Public Health Committee to encourage them to support the nuisance language for wood smoke.
“Wood smoke is harmful when breathed on a continual basis,” Alderman said in her group’s legislative agenda for 2010. “If exposures are long enough and high enough, they will cause bronchitis, pneumonia and in some cases even permanent lung damage.”
Alderman has already met with the co-chairmen of the state Environment Committee about the proposed ban on outdoor wood-burning furnaces and is “very hopeful” that it, too, will win passage.
She noted state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and the American Lung Association have called on the General Assembly to ban outdoor furnaces.
They already are prohibited in four Connecticut towns: Granby, Tolland, Hebron and Ridgefield.
In a recent New Haven Register Op-Ed, Alderman defined an outdoor wood-burning furnace as a small, insulated shed with a short smokestack. It burns wood that heats water that is sent through underground pipes to heat a home or building.
She noted they emit smoke 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Their dense smoke endangers the health of nearby neighbors, she said.
Her group has collected testimonials from families who have been harmed by wood smoke. One of the statements came from Robert G. Johnson of West Haven. He said he suffered asthma attacks and bronchial spasms as a result of wood-burning smoke that came from a chimney near Johnson’s home.
Johnson, who described himself as a 68-year-old asthmatic with hypertension, said his neighbor has stopped burning the wood “for now.”
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 203-789-5766.
Published: Wednesday, January 6, 2010
By Randall Beach, Register Staff
The president of a local environmental group is pressing state legislators to support her organization’s call for a law banning outdoor wood-burning furnaces and adding the words “wood smoke” to the state Public Health Nuisance Code.
Nancy Alderman of North Haven, who heads Environment and Human Health Inc., is optimistic both proposals will win passage during the legislative session that begins next month.
Alderman said adding “wood smoke” to the nuisance code would protect any residents receiving wood smoke in their homes from neighbors.
The sources would include outdoor pits or burners, indoor stoves or even outdoor brush-burning.
“It would cover anything that enters somebody’s house from a neighbor on a continual basis,” she said.
If such a law existed, she noted, local health departments could order the offending neighbor to stop burning.
Last April this legislative proposal passed the Public Health Committee by a large margin but was defeated in the Environment Committee.
Alderman said it failed because state health officials mistakenly believed a case in the Trumbull-Monroe health district made the proposed law unnecessary.
A health officer there had issued a cease and desist order against a burner and the order was upheld by the state Department of Public Health. But Alderman said state officials later learned the new legal precedent merely meant local health officials “may” issue such orders but don’t have to do so.
Alderman said if the proposal became law, local health officials would be mandated to issue such orders against burners who are affecting their neighbors.
Alderman plans to meet next Monday with the co-chairmen of the state Public Health Committee to encourage them to support the nuisance language for wood smoke.
“Wood smoke is harmful when breathed on a continual basis,” Alderman said in her group’s legislative agenda for 2010. “If exposures are long enough and high enough, they will cause bronchitis, pneumonia and in some cases even permanent lung damage.”
Alderman has already met with the co-chairmen of the state Environment Committee about the proposed ban on outdoor wood-burning furnaces and is “very hopeful” that it, too, will win passage.
She noted state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and the American Lung Association have called on the General Assembly to ban outdoor furnaces.
They already are prohibited in four Connecticut towns: Granby, Tolland, Hebron and Ridgefield.
In a recent New Haven Register Op-Ed, Alderman defined an outdoor wood-burning furnace as a small, insulated shed with a short smokestack. It burns wood that heats water that is sent through underground pipes to heat a home or building.
She noted they emit smoke 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Their dense smoke endangers the health of nearby neighbors, she said.
Her group has collected testimonials from families who have been harmed by wood smoke. One of the statements came from Robert G. Johnson of West Haven. He said he suffered asthma attacks and bronchial spasms as a result of wood-burning smoke that came from a chimney near Johnson’s home.
Johnson, who described himself as a 68-year-old asthmatic with hypertension, said his neighbor has stopped burning the wood “for now.”
Randall Beach can be reached at rbeach@nhregister.com or 203-789-5766.
Biomass Plants Are Not The Solution--Massachusetts
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Biomass Plants Are Not The Solution---Massachusetts
By Chris Matera
Special to the Worcester Business Journal
01/04/10
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We need to get serious about global warming and energy generation, but wood burning biomass plants are a false solution, which will worsen our problems, not help to solve them.
While the word “biomass” conjures up pleasant images, the promotion of this old caveman incinerator technology as “green” is a colossal “greenwash” by the timber and trash industries attempting to cash in on lucrative public clean energy subsidies.
One can become quite cynical to learn that our “green” energy subsidies are promoting the cutting of forests and burning them in dirty biomass plants instead of promoting the truly clean energy solutions such as solar, geothermal, appropriately scaled and located wind and hydro, and most importantly conservation and efficiency.
A Biomass Reality Check
Contrary to industry claims, biomass energy does not reduce carbon dioxide emissions, it increases them.
Biomass energy produces 50 percent more carbon dioxide per megawatt hour of energy than coal. That is not a typo, and is based on numbers from the proponents' own reports. Since burning wood is so inefficient, burning living trees is actually worse than burning coal. Biomass burning releases about 3,300 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt, while coal releases 2,100 pounds. Gas-fired plants release even less, about 1,300 pounds.
Not only is burning trees worse than coal for carbon dioxide emissions, but it produces similar levels of other pollutants such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, volatile organic compounds, sulfur dioxide and particulates. The McNeil biomass plant near Burlington, Vt., touted by biomass proponents, is the number one pollution source in the entire state, emitting 79 classified pollutants, according to planethazard.com.
Massachusetts’ current proposals would build 190 megawatts of biomass energy that would require burning 2.5 million tons of wood each year. This is massive considering that the average total timber harvest in Massachusetts is about 500,000 tons. This means that at a historical logging intensity of 19 tons per acre, 100,000 acres of forest would need to be logged every year in Massachusetts for biomass
alone. At this rate, all Western and Central Massachusetts forests could be logged in 16 years. Even our state public forests and parks are targeted for a 1,082 percent increase over historical logging levels to fuel the power plants.
Burning all this forest would only increase Massachusetts power generating capacity 1 percent, yet alternative, economic conservation and efficiency measures, which cost a third of new energy, could reduce our energy use by 30 percent.
At this time of ecological and economic crisis, there is no reasonable argument for forcing taxpayers to subsidize new pollution, carbon dioxide emissions, forest devastation, and carbon-based fuels for minimal amounts of power. These policies will worsen air pollution, increase greenhouse gas emissions, deplete forests and drain our public coffers, the exact opposite of what we need to be doing right now.
These taxpayer subsidies and other incentives should be redirected toward truly green technologies to produce clean, non-carbon emitting energy, and local jobs.
Chris Matera is the founder of Massachusetts Forest Watch, a citizen watchdog group formed to defend Massachusetts state forests against commercial exploitation. Learn more at www.maforests.org.
source http://www.wbjournal.com/news45341.html
By Chris Matera
Special to the Worcester Business Journal
01/04/10
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We need to get serious about global warming and energy generation, but wood burning biomass plants are a false solution, which will worsen our problems, not help to solve them.
While the word “biomass” conjures up pleasant images, the promotion of this old caveman incinerator technology as “green” is a colossal “greenwash” by the timber and trash industries attempting to cash in on lucrative public clean energy subsidies.
One can become quite cynical to learn that our “green” energy subsidies are promoting the cutting of forests and burning them in dirty biomass plants instead of promoting the truly clean energy solutions such as solar, geothermal, appropriately scaled and located wind and hydro, and most importantly conservation and efficiency.
A Biomass Reality Check
Contrary to industry claims, biomass energy does not reduce carbon dioxide emissions, it increases them.
Biomass energy produces 50 percent more carbon dioxide per megawatt hour of energy than coal. That is not a typo, and is based on numbers from the proponents' own reports. Since burning wood is so inefficient, burning living trees is actually worse than burning coal. Biomass burning releases about 3,300 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt, while coal releases 2,100 pounds. Gas-fired plants release even less, about 1,300 pounds.
Not only is burning trees worse than coal for carbon dioxide emissions, but it produces similar levels of other pollutants such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, volatile organic compounds, sulfur dioxide and particulates. The McNeil biomass plant near Burlington, Vt., touted by biomass proponents, is the number one pollution source in the entire state, emitting 79 classified pollutants, according to planethazard.com.
Massachusetts’ current proposals would build 190 megawatts of biomass energy that would require burning 2.5 million tons of wood each year. This is massive considering that the average total timber harvest in Massachusetts is about 500,000 tons. This means that at a historical logging intensity of 19 tons per acre, 100,000 acres of forest would need to be logged every year in Massachusetts for biomass
alone. At this rate, all Western and Central Massachusetts forests could be logged in 16 years. Even our state public forests and parks are targeted for a 1,082 percent increase over historical logging levels to fuel the power plants.
Burning all this forest would only increase Massachusetts power generating capacity 1 percent, yet alternative, economic conservation and efficiency measures, which cost a third of new energy, could reduce our energy use by 30 percent.
At this time of ecological and economic crisis, there is no reasonable argument for forcing taxpayers to subsidize new pollution, carbon dioxide emissions, forest devastation, and carbon-based fuels for minimal amounts of power. These policies will worsen air pollution, increase greenhouse gas emissions, deplete forests and drain our public coffers, the exact opposite of what we need to be doing right now.
These taxpayer subsidies and other incentives should be redirected toward truly green technologies to produce clean, non-carbon emitting energy, and local jobs.
Chris Matera is the founder of Massachusetts Forest Watch, a citizen watchdog group formed to defend Massachusetts state forests against commercial exploitation. Learn more at www.maforests.org.
source http://www.wbjournal.com/news45341.html
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