From: russ@pmafire.inel.gov (Russ Brown)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 93 15:01:49 GMT
Organization: WINCO
Subject: Re: pollution from woodburning fireplace
Summary: 
Followup-To: 
Organization: WINCO
Keywords: 

In article <1993Jan4.220432.5958@microunity.com> rozen@microunity.com (Don Rozenberg) writes:
>ad376@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Patricia Dedula) writes:
>
>
>
>>My neighbor has a woodburning fireplace which he burns from 
>>morning to night.  It is polluting the air around my house to the
>>point where I ca
>>can hardly breathe when I am outside and it is getting into m
>>my house.  Could anyone tell me what could be causing this 
>>pollution.  Could he be burning the wrong kind of wood?  What 
>>could my neighbor do to eliminate or cut down the strong smell
>>that his coming from his fireplace and surrounding my house.
>>I noticed even his chimney is getting black.
>
>Particulate pollution is real - Residential Wood Burning (RWB) is the
>largest contributor of particulate pollution in the Bay Area; 4 wood
>stoves produce more particulate pollution than all the furnaces in Los
>Altos, CA. (app.  10,000 households) - 1 million tons of wood are
>burned per year in the San Francisco Bay Area according to Bay Area
>Air Quality Management District.  That weight of RWB would generate
>more than 15,000 tons of PM10 - Particulate matter less than ten
>microns in diameter.
>
stuff deleted
>
>Residential Wood Burning also generates large quantities of pollutants
>other than particulates which we are struggling to control including
>more than 20% of the winter CO.  Wood smoke contains a large number of
>the carcinogens identified in cigarette smoke as well as heavy metals
>such as arsenic and lead.  In fact, the health effects are similar to
>those attributed to secondary wood smoke.
>
>EPA approved stoves do not solve the problem - they are hundreds of
>times more polluting than natural gas furnaces.  "The PM10 pollution
>from one old woodstove, emitting 60 grams/hour of PM10, equals that of
>ten EPA Certified stoves (averaging 6 grams/hour PM10) or that of
>three thousand gas furnaces - producing the same amount of heat."
>from Woodburning Handbook published by the Air Resources Board of the
>California Environmental Protection Agency.  Particulate pollution
>from wood burning is a very local experience because unlike industrial
>air pollution, residential smoke is emitted from short stacks in
>residential areas.  The problem is frequenty exaserbated by radiation
>inversion layers.
>
>Banning Residential Wood Burning would have NEGATIVE COST because wood
>is much more expensive than cleaner fuels.  How else can you reduce
>pollution by 20% and save the polluter money?  Smoking fuels have been
>banned in urban areas in Great Britain (1956) and the EC (1981).
>

This is enough to make one cry or laugh.  Who remembers the wonderful
bumper sticker from the 70s which said,

 "Burn wood, not atoms"?

Even if the poor science is ignored (Burn molecules, not nuclei???), the
environmental naivete of those (a small fraction) who started to
straggle in on the edges of the environental movement was and is
frightening.  They are no asset to the environment, and only function as
a perverse "balance" for those who would degrade the environment at
ever-increasing rates.