Letter to Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich

URGENT---Letter to Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich


Everyone should read this dynamic, factual, and straightforward letter (and supplemental documents) individually researched and written by a Supporter of the Breathe Healthy Air Coalition.

Here are excerpts from the letter presented to Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.......

RE: Illinois State Implementation Plan for Fine Particulate Matter (PM2.5): Proposal to Include a Ban on Residential Open Burning

"As the rest of the country is “Going Green”, the residents of Illinois continue to pollute the air with fine particulate matter PM2.5 (1-5), ozone precursors (3-8), carcinogens (3-5,8), and greenhouse gases (3,6,8) by burning leaves, yard waste, and recreational campfires during the spring, summer, and fall (Figure 1). Unfortunately, these residential burning practices are legal, and encouraged in most of Illinois, a state that is home to twelve non-attainment counties for two of the most hazardous EPA criteria pollutants: fine particulate matter (PM2.5) (9) and ozone (10).

Proposal: Include an immediate statewide ban on residential open burning (recreational campfires, leaf and yard waste burning) in the PM2.5 State Implementation Plan (SIP) that is due to the U.S. EPA in April 2008 (23). The following twelve (12) counties have been designated by the EPA as non-attainment areas for PM2.5: Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, Will, McHenry, Kendall, Grundy, Madison, Monroe, St. Claire, and Randolph.

Governor Blagojevich, please take action to include a ban on residential open burning (leaves, yard waste and recreational campfires) in the Illinois State Implementation Plan (SIP) for PM2.5 due to the U.S. EPA in April 2008. Such a ban would protect Illinois residents and the environment from the detrimental and lethal effects of breathing the toxic smoke (smoke that contains the same carcinogens and toxic substances as tobacco smoke) from recreational campfires, and leaf burning that occur right next-door. "

A Lake County, Illinois Resident

Click on the Earth image or here for the letter and additional figures.

Website demands wood burning ban--Canada

Website demands wood burning ban

By Kristin Morency, The Suburban.com
Quebec's largest English Weekly Newspaper

June 12, 2008

A West Island woman has launched a website to raise awareness about the effects of wood smoke pollution in residential neighbourhoods.

Stella Haley, who lives in Pointe Claire, said that when her 31-year-old son was diagnosed two years ago with sarcoma, a type of cancer, it prompted her to look into the correlation between air pollution and cancer.

“In looking at sarcoma, I looked at environmental cancers, and I realized that we better start to do something about prevention,” Haley said in a phone interview.

“I decided to make it a public issue, to make people aware,” she said of her organization, called Citizens for Environmental Health.

“But there’s a very unfortunate, deep, embedded resistance. Each person I approach outside of physicians, gives the sense that this is not an issue and nobody wants to touch it,” she explained.

Haley said she raised her son, Shane Theriault, in Hudson.

“We were inundated with smoke from people who were committed to burning [wood] day after day,” she said.

“I knew at the time... There was a very high risk to [my son’s] health... He constantly played outside in that smoke,” she said.

Montreal city council passed a resolution in April to find a way to combat pollution caused by wood heating. The resolution also asked the provincial government to help find a solution to the problem.

To minimize the impact of wood smoke on health, Health Canada suggests choosing a low emission stove, such as an appliance that is certified by the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) or the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

But Haley, who ran for city councillor in Pointe Claire in 2004, said that many people are fooled by the certifications on wood burning stoves.

“What we have seen is that all of the testing is done and conducted by the industry [itself], they own and conduct their tests and they self-certify themselves,” she said.

“There’s a conflict of interest — it’s extremely unbelievable.”

According to the Canadian Lung Association, wood stoves pollute the air with particulate matter (a mixture of microscopic particles declared a toxic substance under the Environmental Protection Act, which can lead to serious respiratory problems,) carbon monoxide (which can cause fatigue, headaches, dizziness, confusion, and at very high levels, death,) oxides of nitrogen (which lower the resistance to lung infections and irritate the lungs of people who suffer from asthma), as well as a slew of other chemicals that are harmful.

Children are particularly vulnerable to wood smoke, because their respiratory systems are still developing, and because they have higher rates of activity and inhale more air, Health Canada says.

Haley said she had organized a conference on the topic of wood burning and its effects on childrens’ health, to be presented at Pointe Claire city hall, but it fell through.

“When [Pointe Claire Mayor Bill McMurchie] heard this, he pretended he was going along with us, but two weeks prior to the conference I got a call saying that we could no longer use the city hall for our conference, because it’s only used for [council] meetings,” Haley said.

“That’s totally false. All I can say is that we need to work, to get ahead, and to stop smoke from causing cancer, heart disease and asthma.

“On the street behind me, there is a woman who has lung cancer, and she never touched a cigarette,” Haley added.

“Nobody’s death certificate says they died from wood burning smoke, because it’s been kept silent. We want people to not have to experience cancer... If we can avoid it.”

For more information or to sign Haley’s petition: www.citizensfeh.com.

kristin@thesuburban.com

Heating Your Home: Why Open Fireplaces Don’t Heat

Heating Your Home: Why Open Fireplaces Don’t Heat

Written by Chris Schille
Published on June 1st, 2008
Posted in Energy, Heating & Cooling


Open fireplaces have a reputation for polluting air. Actually, a fireplace, when burned hot and fast, creates very little pollution. The trouble is, a hot fire in a fireplace sometimes yields less heat than a smoldering fire. Where does the heat go?

The optimal amount of combustion air contains just enough oxygen to burn all combustible gases liberated by the heat. Any additional air grabs heat and sends it up the chimney. Under some circumstances, fireplaces can so far exceed this air-to-fuel ratio that they suck more heat out of a house than they radiate back into it. The fire actually makes the house colder!

The usable heat produced from the fireplace is primarily radiation, the same heat you feel on your face when you look at the flames. While fireplaces often contain lots of thermal mass (masonry), the unrestricted flow of cool air across this mass prevents it from capturing much heat. Nevertheless, if the damper is closed as soon as the fire burns out, a significant amount of heat will radiate back into the room instead of going up the chimney. Unfortunately, when the fire burns out, many fireplace users give up and go to bed without taking this critical step.

Here’s where pollution enters the picture: instead of burning a quick, hot fire and closing their damper, most people elect to burn their wood slowly to meter out heat.

Slow combustion means that the wood is burning at a lower temperature. At a lower temperature, a smaller portion of the combustible gases actually burn. More gases leave the chimney as smoke and soot (pollution).

With fireplaces, you really can’t win: if you burn a hot fire, you lose most of the heat up the chimney. If you burn a slow fire, you get very little heat, and lots of pollution.


Web master note---Stop burning wood. Convert to gas or electric!!!

Another burning issue---wood smoke!

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Topeka Capital-Journal,
Feb 1, 2001 by Capital-Journal

Another burning issue---wood smoke!

The problem of secondhand smoke in Topeka restaurants has been a hot topic lately. Wood smoke is the "other" secondhand smoke. Wood burning exposes you and your neighbors to combustion byproducts called smoke. It is hard to get away from; smoke seeps indoors even if you don't burn.

You know about the effects of cigarette smoke on your respiratory system. Delicate tissues that are infected, irritated and scarred can cause long trending health consequences.

Wood smoke contains many irritating gases and chemicals. The biggest danger, however, is particulate matter, which is so small that 30 particles fit on a single red blood cell.

Unlike a soft tobacco tar, the wood smoke particles can be solid, chemical coated pieces of wood. Once inside the lungs, these wooden daggers swell up in the moist atmosphere and can cause even more damage than a softer smoke.

We can, if necessary, avoid secondhand cigarette smoke by removing ourselves from the scene. This is not possible when the home is being invaded by someone else's wood burning byproduct.

If you have someone in you neighborhood heating their home with wood, I would encourage you to seek information about the hazard to your family's health. "Burning Issues, A Project of Clean Air Revival Inc." or (burningissues.org) on the Web is one source of information. Share this information with your neighbor. Then let your representative to the city council know your concerns.

--- WARREN DIETRICH, Topeka.

Citizens for Environmental Health

Citizens for Environmental Health

About Us.....

Our Commitment---

We will support citizens with current information about health related environmental issues, and through our united efforts, will promote vitality, health, harmony and sustainability. Together, we reach forward with informed vision and fortitude. Citizens for environmental health act in the pursuit of one positive intention, to do whatever it takes to safeguard all life.

We are committed to all aspects of prevention. Our focus is on the air we breathe; on the grass we walk and play on, as well as how we use household energy, transportation, and the safety of consumer products. We realize the importance of being able to trust that the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink. The policies we endorse serve to ensure maximum health in healthy environments. We realize the need to rethink several beliefs--and time is of essence. We are committed to exploring behaviors, which have become habits. We see the need to evaluate our present actions, as these are the underlying cause of the many challenges that we face in these times of climate crisis.

We are dedicated to safeguarding all life. We are committed to helping citizens learn current and respected information so that together we discover a better, happier, joyful, and safer way to live. We are deeply committed to protecting the health of all citizens, especially the children. We embrace ways of strengthening communication about what we think we know, how we think and what we believe we know, so that we act with cautious stewardship to ensure clean, safe tobacco- and chimney-smoke free air.

We Believe---

We believe that we have borrowed the earth and the air from our children and we must give it back clean and inviting and as safe as possible. We believe that we must do whatever it takes to ensure smoke free air, since air is essential to life.

We believe strongly in the importance of protecting the environment and citizens’ health. We are especially committed to the importance of the right to breathe smoke free air. We believe that living in safe communities is our vital right. In the interest of social justice, being free to breathe clean chimney-smoke-free air is a given right and that this right is not to be compromised. We believe that clean air is essential to life and to healthy neighborhoods. We recognize that it is our duty and responsibility as custodians, to protect children from all dangers. We acknowledge that chimney smoke is a carcinogen, a grave and unnecessary danger to children. We believe that all smoke including EPA smoke is a critical health risk and this unnecessary pollution must be stopped. The present is our gift to future generations; therefore it is our duty to embrace the safest and highest environmental standards possible. We encourage all organizations, regardless of faith, or geographical borders, to perpetuate positive actions. We invoke linear togetherness that encourages shared vision, mutual arm in arm support, and activities, that unite and guide us as we courageously face challenges of global warming. We acknowledge the challenge of changing old ways behaviors and recognize that sacrifices must be made to adjust to climate change new realities. We strongly promote The Precautionary Principle in practice and policy, therefore we expect and oblige our elected officials to act to ensure sustainability, and to do all in their power to the health of all citizens. We expect policy that reduces risks and ensures safe sustainable environments. One can truly make a difference through informed forward thinking, political will, transparency, responsibility and, of course, doing what is right. Our motto: Together for Better. We invite you to join as we believe we must act with urgency today, to do what is must be done, “For the sake of the kids”, for now and forever.

Who we are----

We are a preventive action-oriented environmental association, dedicated to ensuring the maximum protection of all citizens, all life, in the healthiest and safest environment possible.

Our Motto----

“Together for Better!” THEME 1- Clean air is essential to life


Our Mission----

WHAT WE DO NOW

As a global citizens' group, we, Citizensforenvironmentalhealth.com, commit to being forerunners of change. With respect for the earth, and all life, we are spirited and above all determined to make a difference. We are enthusiastically dedicated to sharing current information on prevention, on how to act, so as to safeguard air quality. We are determined to expand public knowledge about all issues of prevention.

Currently, our focus is wood smoke. We provide our guests and members with vital information on this subject. We ensure that this information is accurate and that the source is highly respected. We access reference material from the most qualified institutions and ensure that it is informative, factual and current. We assist in the expansion of awareness by providing material that is non-biased, from a reliable source, and that it furthers the Community Right to Know. We provide information that has been documented over the last two decades. We provide documented reference material from thousands of studies on health risks and wood smoke pollution. We demonstrate in these documents the critical health risks facing citizens who are placed in harm’s way from breathing neighbourhood chimney smoke. We recognize citizens have been denied this knowledge and believe it is crucial to provide this information to all citizens. We clearly oppose all wood burning and stress the concern for the dangers of misguided false information about EPA Stove Smoke. We are determined to reveal the truths about total carcinogenic emissions in EPA and all neighbourhood smoke. We realize that we, as responsible citizens, and as an informed society, must stop the dissemination of false information. We discourage and demand a stop to this fatal habit.

We expose issues of non-disclosure, EPA conflict of interest and government inaction with regard to smoke emissions. We maintain and uphold citizens’ right to truth and transparency. We are committed to expanding information and suggest that, by denying Community Right to Know, as well as ignoring the Precautionary Principle, by limiting access to information, ignoring vital facts and providing information that is biased, the government is exposing innocent citizens, especially children, to ambient air which threatens their very lives.

Our mission is to ensure that publications and promotional material from industry and government institutions address the truths about emissions, are transparent and provide clear testimony about the false claims of up to 9O% of emissions that in reality are less than one percent, these fraudulent designed statements pose critical risk, can cause mortal harm .
We wish to alert the public about the suggestive false claims about smoke from Certified EPA Stoves. We will ensure that this vital information is no longer hidden, but, on the contrary, becomes common knowledge.

We oppose all wood burning; acknowledge the risk and danger to life that that results from smoke pollution. We are strongly opposed to the burning of wood as a secondary or primary heating source, and work towards ensuring public rightful access to smoke free air. We maintain that the practice of burning wood must be curtailed, as it constitutes a grave and unnecessary danger to society. We oppose all wood burning, except in emergency situations.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

Welcome to all citizens from all corners of the world.

Here, at Citizens for Environmental Health, we invite you to take hands and with widespread energy and through groundbreaking intention, we will awaken to a new positive and purposeful direction.

Welcome to where a new thought form will be recognized and, from where, instead of failure, we will discover, manifest, and create change. We acknowledge that the hardest problem to fix is the one we do not know exists.

We know that air is essential to all life. However most people know very little about the air that we breathe in wood smoke neighbourhoods Unfortunately, people have not been told much about this smoke polluted air. So, with this site, we will do what we must do to give ourselves the best chance to live cancer risk free and replenish our neighbourhoods with safe smoke free air. Welcome to where we will replenish the air.

Smoke is the antithesis of air. Smoke, wood burning, we have romanticized and somehow taken for granted, as harmless. Far from harmless, harmful smoke, produced from burning tree parts in 2008, is the world’s third highest source of pollution and this smoke is a real threat to our health and all life on the planet. This burning smoke emits billions of tons of emissions, carcinogenic chemicals, carbon, benzene, fumes, dioxin and hexacholorbenzene into the air that we breathe each day.

Little is known about this second hand neighbourhood smoke. Yet, thousands of studies conclude that residential smoke is a major cause of all illness, heart disease, stroke, asthma, diabetes, all cancers, including breast cancer and even death. Smoke produced from residential wood burning costs 24% of the total green house gases in Canada each year. In Quebec , where emissions have grown 20% in the last five years, this smoke causes 55% of particulate matter, a deadly molecular soot pollution that enters deep into the lungs. And, all that smoke, people know very little about. People deserve and have the right to know. We think differently, we act more responsibly, when we know the facts.

Residential Wood Burning Smoke Pollution has become a primary cause of carbon emissions, benzene and dioxin, and is among the worse and the highest contributor of pollution in the world. Wood burning deforestation is not the way of the new earth that we see. We can change.

Welcome to where we learn about how we can change the thoughts that have not been our servant but our ignorant master. Wood burning is the cause of over, 90% of winter pollution, however, this pollution in Canada , is caused by only 4% of people. Most people however, are not even aware that this smoke is a serious health threat. Issues about smoke been silenced for years, so, most do not know that the smoke from their chimney causes suffering to their neighbours, triggers asthma, heart attacks, and stroke and claims thousands of innocent lives in Canada alone, each year. Unknown to many, as Devra Davies stated in her celebrated book, Cutting Through the Smoke, “ Pollution never shows up on death certificates.” According to Health Canada , thousands of Canadians die each year from smoke carcinogenic exposure. Neighbourhood smoke is the silent killer that we know little about. Why have we been, for so long, kept in the dark about this smoke?

The devastation caused by the toxins in smoke is causing environmental havoc and destruction to all living things. We must change. It is time we clear the air.

Welcome to where we take responsibility for the safety of our children. Asthma is the highest cause of death in children. Let us act to make sure the kids breathe air that is not a toxic mixture of smoke. Children are at the highest risk. Can we allow smoke, fumes and chemicals to be constantly emitted into their growing bodies? Smoke is scarring their lungs and accumulating in blood cells of our children. With this true coming together for better, we make certain that the children are all able to live more safely, free from all cigarette and wood burning smoke. We owe it to our kids! We will act.

As a mother of a son who has seen the face of cancer first hand, I ask you to join us in this movement where we believe that the best treatment is prevention. Whether for cancer, lung disease, asthma, stroke and heart disease and Breast Cancer prevention from avoidable risks is crucial. We invite you help us voice the need and to fight for change so that citizens, parents, and children will not be made to suffer environmental cancer. Here is where asthma, coughs and lung infections, caused from breathing smoke will not get a place to start. We can prevent all the environmental cancer and diseases caused from breathing smoke-toxic neighbourhood dirty air. Is burning wood worth the cost? We Adopt Prevention as the Best Cure!

We together can and must reduce risks and prevent exposure to all smoke. Reducing risks is breathing smoke free.

We invite you to become informed about an unknown subject, this silent killer that is causing illness, great distress and suffering and especially endangering our children. Smoke is placing kids at very heightened risk. Smoke from chimneys is causing irreversible environmental damage and placing our health and the health of the unborn at heightened risk.

Vital to changing is the urgent need to address is the lack of science and lack of integrity in EPA Certified Stoves. Unless we awaken to the facts, as is stated in the critical review of EPA Integrity, May 22, 2008 in which, Senate House Leader, Waxman states that EPA decisions “are not based on Science nor regulations, but are adopted by the White House for political reasons” we will not see real change. We need to dissect the myth of this power industry and see that the truths about EPA Certified stoves. Independent tests (INTERTEC) conclude stove emissions show an increase of 400% dioxin in EPA chimney smoke. As with all emissions, studies conclude none, no emissions are reduced in home use of stoves. Emissions are reduced in lab testing only. The industry owns the labs! The industry certifies itself! People need to know the studies and reviews prove that testing is not based on scientific facts.

There is no reduction in concentration but what is to be made caution is the fact that Dioxin in smoke exposure is placing women at risk to develop Breast Cancer. Walking in smoke is like smoking 16 cigarettes in one half hour!

We must stop this smoke that is placing women at risk. Studies prove carcinogens from breathing this smoke accumulate in the blood cells and fatty tissue, causing changes, directly impacting and increasing risks for women to develop Breast Cancer. It is urgent. We must act.


Together we can and must reduce these avoidable risks and prevent exposure to all carcinogenic smoke. Reducing risks is breathing smoke free.

We acknowledge the respected government and institutional research that proves that wood smoke is more toxic than cigarette smoke. We extend a welcome to our institutions and government agencies. We expect and oblige our elected policy makers to adopt policy that is, the best and the safest policy, that is informed, and that is clearly the most forward thinking, sustainable health based, environmental policy.

Nothing less is acceptable. PREVENTION is the BEST CURE.

Health must be number one in policy.

We realize that, unfortunately, people have been kept in the dark about neighbourhood smoke.

Seeing that people are victims of not knowing much about this second hand smoke, we want to make a difference in getting the information out there. We welcome citizens, policy makers and the media to a place where people are respectively given access to the facts, where they can make informed decisions, become healthier citizens, live and breathe in health and enjoy the best quality of life. We ensure that life is given the best chance, so that people can live happier, longer and better, breather clean and safe air in their homes and neighbourhoods. People must not be forced to breathe neighbours’ toxic smoke in their own homes. People have the right to live smoke free. No one should be able to take your breath away.

We believe and do our best and will continue to see that the information is made easily available, so good willed citizens can act responsibly, stop polluting with smoke, and do what is right for our environment and our families. We must protect the air for future generations.


We invite all citizens from worldwide communities to learn, share in the dialogue, chat with each other, support, and participate, so that we informed and determined to change. We must take a new direction.

We know it is time for change and we believe that through willpower and awareness, citizens in communities will engage in change, and will help each other live more safely, in smoke free neighbourhoods. Climate change is upon us. We may not have a second chance.

Wood burning smoke is threat to our well-being and future generations. Witnessing the raging earth now struggling to combat climate change, the world food shortage, the hungry desolate people displaced, those before our eyes, who, by the millions, are falling victims to the ravishes of climate change, we too, may soon become one of them. We humans are the fragile. We are the meek and the humble. We must change. We ask each other to think about today and tomorrow’s children. They need us. What are we leaving for our grandchildren who shall inherit the air and the earth? We had a beautiful world handed to us what can we do to now give our children the same beautiful earth? Certainly dirty smoky air is not what our children should be handed, nor expect from us.

We need to act towards change and courageously create a better, cleaner and safer world. It is time for change. We have no choice. Please join together, with Citizens for Environmental Health, join a world where we work towards a wide awakened conscious. Becoming a member, if you wish to donate, we appreciate your help. In joining, you will receive our newsletter, and we will unite our voice. We can see that this is so important. We have never needed each other more than we do today. Time is of essence. Welcome! Become a member. It’s free. The best things in life are free. Our health is our most precious resource. Our earth, our air, what we need to enjoy life. We recognize that is we may stand to lose.. Now is the best time we have. Let’s get to work, create hope and make this a cleaner world. Let’s make successful change happen. We can and we will make a new, safer, smoke free world, a reality. Let’s do it for the kids!

Welcome! Let’s do it! We can and we will.

http://www.citizensforenvironmentalhealth.com/homepage.html

Webmaster comment---We welcome and applaud your efforts!

Why wood burning is not carbon neutral

Why wood burning is not carbon neutral

Credit to....Posted on May 16, 2008 by robertkyriakides-web blog site

When politicians and advertisers and propagandists want to do something to persuade us that a policy or product or idea is something new, because the old policy, product or idea has failed, they re-invent vocabulary and assign new meanings to words in the hope of fooling us into thinking that the policies, products and ideas are new, whereas it is only the words that are new or used in a different context.

So instead of a settlement negotiation we have a “road map”. A “problem” becomes “an issue”. It has always been thus: Voltaire pointed out that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.

In environmental matters words are abused as much as energy is, to hide their real meanings and persuade us that there are easy options. We have “zero carbon homes” which produce carbon, and “a low carbon building programme” which is neither low carbon, nor is it a building programme and we have carbon offsetting, which does not offset carbon, merely slings a few ounces in one side of the balance when there are pounds in the other side. Worse of all, we have the concept of “carbon neutral”.

A forum at the Burning Issue website points out that “carbon neutral” cannot apply to any carbon based fuel. It can only apply to energy sources that do not in their fuel, create carbon – such as solar, nuclear and wind energy. You can read more about this at http://burningissues.org/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=668 and I recommend that you do.

The burning issues website is concerned with air pollution caused by burning. My concern with this subject (and an article I wrote about this) led a UK trade association to write to me to ask me to stop criticising other renewable technologies.

I cannot do that. I cannot subscribe to the concept that all renewable technologies are equal. Some are better than others. Some are better in some locations than others. You would not put solar panels on a house that is in the middle of a shady forest and you shouldn’t put wood burning furnaces in apartment buildings in the middle of London (although the latter has happened, believe it or not!).

The good people at the Burning Issues website have calculated that to offset the carbon produced by a very small home fuelled by wood burning needs around 63 acres of land to plant trees on, cutting down two acres each year for fuel and replanting as they go. After 30 years the process restarts.

I have not tested their calculations but it is clear to me that to offset the carbon emitted by wood burning needs far more tree planting than we are doing as a planet. It may be in some communities in places where the population is small and the woodland extensive this may happen, but it does not count for much if we burn more wood than we grow each year.

Although we are not planting as many trees as we have to plant (and somehow I doubt if we ever will) out in Australia farmers are looking to store or sequestrate carbon in the soil.

Ever since Australia was colonised at the expense of its aboriginal people, the colonists have farmed sheep. They were encouraged to clear the land of trees – they would cut down a tree to make room for a sheep. Intensive grazing by sheep led to soil degradation and when the soil was degraded sufficiently the farmers move on to new land and started the process again there.

That process meant that the land was leached of its stored carbon. Currently Australian soils store little carbon but a new movement there is leading to carbon gradually being replaced in soils by farmers who farm in ways that enable the soil to hold as much carbon as possible and retain it.

In essence they want to ensure that the carbon in decomposing matter that once lived is pushed into the soil by roots of foliage and held there as humus. Depending on what you grow, the soil can either release carbon or store it and the Australian soil carbon farmers seek to retain as much carbon in the soil as possible.

Now this is real carbon sequestration; the soils of the planet already hold more carbon than the atmosphere and vegetation combined, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

There is plenty of land to store carbon; the Australian colonial farmers were not exceptional – mostly farming has released carbon from the soil. When a forest is cleared in, say, Ecuador, for farming the clearing of the wood and its burning releases carbon and then when the soil is tilled and ploughed and worked more and more carbon is also released.

It seems fairly obvious that we should not burn wood, except perhaps waste wood from households that we cannot recycle, and that we should leave the forests undisturbed so that they can sequester carbon by allowing the vegetation to rot into peat. We should study the methods of the Australian soil carbon farmers and implement their ideas into farms everywhere.

It also seems obvious that the techniques of political or commercial persuasion by renaming things ultimately never work, because people realise eventually that the thing is still the “same old, same old” thing. They will realise it when they cough their way through wood smoke as the intensity of particulates and the measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to increase and with it changing the climate, despite all the so called carbon neutrality.

Note...Credit to--Posted on May 16, 2008 by robertkyriakides-web blog site

Biomass, wood smoke, particulates and cancers

Biomass, wood smoke, particulates and cancers

From---Posted on March 17, 2008 by robertkyriakides-web blog site

When we breathe in we inhale not only air but dust, and very small particles of stuff that we humans have put in the atmosphere. We know that these can be harmful – coal dust and asbestos dust spring immediately to mind.

Because we are putting relatively speaking so much into the atmosphere scientists are trying to understand the effect of these particles on human health.There is therefore a great deal of study and experimentation involving the toxicology of particles and fibres.

Much of this is reported in Particle and Fibre Toxicology, which you can access at http://www.particleandfibretoxicology.com/ . The journal is peer reviewed and attracts papers from scientists of many different disciplines, in order to encourage the inter-disciplinary approach that is necessary in this field, and indeed in most fields of human study.

Climate change scientists examine global phenomena using physics, chemistry, geology climatology, meteorology, and many other disciplines. Particle toxicologists examine the reactions of tiny substances in small quantities on animals using physics, chemistry, physiology, biology. Sometimes you ignore the small things at your peril.

Climate change is a big thing, unable to be verified by experimentation and subject to much discussion and many alternate theories even though a scientific consensus has been reached which would be dangerous to ignore.Particle toxicology involves tiny substances, which you also ignore at your peril.I have written from time to time about biomass – wood burning to generate energy – either heat energy for homes or in the case of the propose Port Talbot Power Plant electrical energy.

Biomass is promoted as a carbon free or low carbon way to generate energy, because the plant material is replaced and the carbon emitted is reabsorbed. I have expressed my doubts about this being wholly true.There are health issues with burning biomass, and as a society we seem to be a little blind to them.

We woke up to health issues with coal mining and asbestos rather late in the day and I would hope we can avoid this happening with biomass.

Some studies were carried out in Norway where the main air pollutants are caused by vehicles and wood burning which together are responsible for 65% of Norway’s total emissions. The scientists wanted to try to understand how the content of particles, their size and characteristics affect human health and find physical or chemical properties of these particles.

Now particles from asbestos, cigarette smoke and similar matters have been associated with health problems – particularly cancers and heart disease, although the precise way in which they cause these problems is not fully understood.The scientists tested a traditional wood burning stove by burning wood in it at high temperature and collecting and analysing the smoke and also by collecting exhaust fumes.

These studies have been reported in the Particle and Fibre Toxicology Journal. The scientists found that the exhaust particles were smaller than the wood particles but that the wood smoke particles had a higher polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (“PAH”) content.

Some studies link particles with a high PAH content to these health problems and that there is a strong relationship between organic particles (such as cigarette and wood smoke) to lung cancer. One particular type of PAH has been identified by the US Environmental Protection Agency as a cause for concern – PAH 16 which is thought to be carcinogenic.

Because they found that the PAH content was much higher in wood smoke than in vehicle exhaust, they concluded that it was important to understand more about how the body responds to higher PAH content in particulates, rather than compare wood smoke and traffic fumes.

There are still many questions that need further research – what is the precise role of inhaled PAHs on human health? Does using different wood sources affect the PAH content? Does using reclaimed, painted or varnished wood provide a higher or lower PAH content when burnt?

The message here is not that wood stoves give you cancer or that biomass boilers will harm people. The message is that there must be a question mark against them and that we must move carefully with research based information before we embark on a biomass boiler programme because air quality is important and that we worsen air quality at our peril.

The European Commission thinks that air pollution reduces life expectancy on average by none months, and poor air quality in the UK is thought to cause 32,000 premature deaths each year. We traditionally blame vehicle particulates for this.

In the 1950s the Government introduced clean air legislation and “Smokeless Zones” which have had a profoundly beneficial effect on our health.In the UK there is no doubt that the Department of the Environment has been doing good work in improving air quality. My concern is that with an increased take up of biomass for energy this good work will be undone and that in twenty years from now we shall be facing similar public health problems that were caused by coal burning in the 1950s and 1960s.

Those in favour of biomass will point to improved filtering operations. I hope that they are right about the efficacy of the filters from biomass boilers. Even if they are right I think that we still have to factor in human behaviour. Boilers of all kinds need regular servicing and biomass boilers will not only need normal servicing but the filtration system will need to be regularly checked and renewed.

A biomass boiler will still work without proper servicing but will work in a very polluting way. Inertia is an important factor in human behaviour. How many people have their gas boilers serviced properly each year? How many condensing boilers no longer condense due to incorrect set up or lack of servicing? My fear is that inertia will lead to biomass boilers creating the very harm that we employ them to prevent.

Credit to...Posted on March 17, 2008 by robertkyriakides-web blog site