Where’s there wood smoke, there’s a health hazard

Where’s there wood smoke, there’s a health hazard

Because wood comes from trees and since trees are natural and/or since pioneers burned wood, many people assume that wood smoke is benign. Nothing could be further from the truth. Whether it is from a fireplace or a wood stove, wood smoke contains significant amounts of the most toxic substances on the planet: dioxins, furans, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, sulfur dioxide and many others. These substances are sent into the air as fine particles that travel deeply into the lungs.

Wood smoke causes lung and cardiovascular disease and premature death. Wood smoke is more than 10 times more carcinogenic than is tobacco smoke and, where it is burned, it easily outstrips cars’ and industry’s effects on human health.

A neighbor’s home is heated with wood through the winter. Thus, my other neighbors and I have acrid, visible wood smoke in the air outside our houses for nearly half of the year. Not only is it annoying to smell wood smoke every time we step outside during cool weather, but it’s distressing the learn (Google “wood smoke carcinogenic,” for example) that wood smoke nanoparticles enter even tightly sealed houses, so harmful levels of wood smoke are inside houses, as well.

Heating with wood is unnecessary in a high-density setting, where natural gas or oil are readily available. Given the health damage it causes, wood burning is an inappropriate, anti-community technology.

Reports indicate that, even when it comes from a certified stove, wood smoke contains 200 times as many hazardous particles as does fuel oil exhaust. Natural gas burns cleaner than oil.

Burning wood is not “green.” It’s lethal and should be banned in populated areas.

Mark Oshinskie,
New Brunswick
The writer is an environmental attorney.

Source:http://www.nj.com/times-opinion/index.ssf/2011/12/times_of_trenton_letters_to_th_192.html