Ban sought on outdoor wood furnaces

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.