Health Hazards From Wood Smoke

My ex and her son both had asthma. The ex also developed bronchitis easily. They lived with me here for 4 years, burning/heating with wood 24/7 from October to March. Never once did they have any problems due to wood burning. Just my experience here. Can't speak for others.
If your wife wants it to be a problem, it will be.

Even with the best wood and an EPA stove, there is some particulate matter, and not just that which may drift in.. but some gets directly into the house during stove loading operations, and for sure when taking ash out.

The only way I know to check would to be to not burn for a couple weeks and see if there is any improvement. My wife thinks/feels her alergies etc are much better since we switched from a fireplace to a wood stove. We ran the fireplace a lot.

I have asthma and it's never caused an issue for me. My asthma is more allergy sensitive and wood smoke/dust doesn't seem to have an impact on that. In the fall/summer I can spend all day or night in front of a firepit inhaling a lot of smoke and that doesn't cause issues either. Now put me in the same room with a cat or even a real Christmas tree and I'm a mess!

With that said I'm sure it can affect people differently. With today's modern stoves I think it's less of an issue though. My biggest fight is having enough patience when emptying the ash from the stove not to make a mess. I'd think that would be a bigger issue then the smoke.

With proper wood, stove, and install, I doubt the stove exhaust will be an issue. My wife has mild asthma and my 8 year old is what one would call "medically fragile". Neither feel any ill effects at all from our stove. As others said, if anything is going to be an issue, it will be the ashes.

Good luck.

Woodburn, I've wrote this for so many times I think I should make a copy on a notepad.

Emptying ashes need not be a problem and you do not have to get ash dust all over everything. You don't need to get dust at all if you handle it right. A little history: I started at age 6 with the chores of the wood stove and my first chore was to start emptying ashes from our stoves. We had 2 heater stoves and a wood cook stove so there was a goodly amount. I was so proud doing it the first time....until I was done. Then I earned another job which was giving the whole house a complete dusting! Oh I hated that. So, at age 6 I quickly learned how to empty ashes without spreading dust.

The big key to it all is to handle the ashes very gently and move slow. When you get a shovel full, I always held it for a few seconds in the stove to make sure I didn't have too much on the shovel and then you slowly and gently lower that ash shovel down into the ash bucket. Then when you get the shovel all the way down, once again, move slow and handle gently, slide the shovel out from under the ashes. Notice I did not say you dump the ashes! You slide the shovel gently out from under the ashes. If you do this you will not have ash dust.


Back to the asthma. If you see my signature line you'll see we've burned wood for a couple of years or so. During that time I have known several folks who had asthma and they too heated with wood. Only one person did I run into that claimed it was still a problem but that person we sort of doubted as they were lazy and we thought they just did not want to do the work involved with burning wood and it was only one of many so it has to be questioned. Still, it is understandable why you would be concerned.

One caution though; don't believe everything you read on the Internet. For sure one can usually find some article that will agree with some theory but then, you can also find articles that claim to know and they will say things like cutting your wood in October to get ready for the winter. Is that right just because some stupid editor or journalist printed it? Sorry. Folks tend to read some obscure thing and put too much faith in it. In practice things don't work out the same as some writers would have you believe.

Thinking abstractly, one thing that may be an issue is the relative humidity in the house. I seem to remember hearing when the air becomes dryer and the nasal passages dry out you can become more succeptible to infections. Now, I could be completely off and could have received false information (or my mind could just be playing tricks on me). I often suffer from severe sinus infections at the end of October and early November (makes hunting season a real joy!) and have been around wood heat all my life- never really correlated it to the beginning of wood burning season until this year. I am not a doctor and I do not play one on TV, but it is just a thought.

I think you are going to get a consensus opinion that there is little direct connection with your burning practices and asthma. That said, it is all anecdotal and not scientific. To ease your wife's concern, invest in a quality commercial HEPA filter and either set it up in the kids room or close by, alternatively set it in the stove room. Change the filters frequently and put them in plastic bags for comparison. Don't buy one of the hyped TV infomercial type units, but a legitimate health filter. This will give her some piece of mind and may help, but there is no guarantee. My brother doesn't have a problem with wood smoke, but high smog levels knock him down. Your first inclination is my suspected cause, little critters and there berms,

Please excuse the cut and paste job from a previous response:

Three of us have the allergy/asthma combo (on maintenance puffers). Our asthma specialist explained that when you have asthma and/or allergies you are basically a bucket and every trigger fills to your bucket. When your bucket overflows your allergies and/or asthma kick in. Triggers can be stress, dust, pollen, smoke, mold etc. We tore out all carpets three years ago (doctor’s orders). We invested in dust mite covers (zipped up cover with tightly woven material) for all our pillows, duvets and mattresses. Gross out alert: dust mite poo is a very bad allergen. Old human skin & above 45 percent humidity is what they are looking for so a pillow and mattress are heaven for them. I was told if you weigh a mattress when its new and then re-weigh it 10 years later it can double in weight due to their waste. We found that breathing was A LOT easier at night. If we feel stuffed up before bed a pure saline nasal (sea water) spray will clean the sinuses. A couple of last hints. Wash sheets/ towels in hot every week & don’t wash any dust rags with bedding. Tumble any bedding that does not like hot wash (quilts etc) in a hot dryer every month. Anything that cannot tolerate a hot wash use some borax in the load as that kills the mites. My daughter’s asthma attacks disappeared along with my son’s nasal polyps.

We installed a woodstove with trepidation 2 years ago as the asthma specialist said it may trigger the attacks again. We didn’t think it would make things worse as our HRV sometimes brings in our neighbour’s smoke already. So far so good (gone through 2 years of burning). We keep about 2 week’s worth of wood indoors and burn all weekends and at night the other days of the week. So far no asthma attacks & returned polyps. I do lose my voice on occasion but I’m not sure if its the stove or the dry heat it produces, or where I work (40 year old carpets). I have noticed that the dust level is down in the house (we had electric baseboard before) but I do agree that there can be a light film of ash around the stove.

Daughter would have asthma attacks that needed ER care every time she visited my mother-in-law or sister-in-law but never had them when she visited my mother who kept the messiest house out of the three. I never understood this until the specialist said that excessive CLEANING was the worst thing for an asthmatic. Extended family would always frantically clean in advance of visits putting all of the allergens into the air. Forced air heat has the same effect.

A last statistic for your case…a woodstove will help to dry out your house which reduces the number of dust mites in your house.

Best of luck in reducing the triggers and keeping the stove running as there is NOTHING like wood heat.

I don't think the wood smoke should be a problem unless its an indoor problem because your stove has smoke spillage when you open the door.

I would probably do some research on the web on Vitamin D and childhood asthma.

"I have never seen any dust kick up. "

Get a very bright flashlight (one of those million-candlepower jobs would be best) and shine it across the area in which you're working (not into the stove, but across in front). That'll give a true test of how much, if any, dust you're kicking up.

my son battled asthma/bronchial problems as a youngster(he's 11 now, and doesn't have issues anymore...)

i think the dust from woodstoves can influence indoor air quality alot more than smoke re-entering the home from outside.

biggest culprits in home-- dust, pet dander, mold
minimize these Indoor air quality issues is the best we can do, our neighbors still burn wood/coal/gas

Backwoods Savage said:

One caution though; don't believe everything you read on the Internet.

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The general problem is, people will tend to believe the first thing they are told, and anything afterwards may well be compared, and then probably viewed as wrong if it differs.

It's just the way people are, been there myself in the past................

And my way of emptying ashes is to place the ashpan slowly in a bag, carry the whole outside, and empty it into a steel fireproof container.

I hate ash, except on my veg plot

Since other people commented on ash removal, I don't feel too much like I"m threadjacking to follow that meander.

For this, you need a pan that fits inside your woodstove firebox. I use an old turkey roaster--the curved corners, height, and length all work in my favor for this--and use a rubbermaid dust pan to scoop my ashes into the roaster while its still inside the stove. I have to kick up some ash in there with a brush (I find the kind that is used for applying wallpaper paste is really good for that--some flex to the bristles, but stiff enough to move things out of the crevices), but because its inside the firebox, the draft just sucks that ash up the chimney. Seems to help. I then carry the roaster outside and dump it in an old metal trash can.

This trick wouldn't work if you had a problem with draft, but if yours is on the perky side, it's worth a try.

My wife and I never had a problem with the ash/smoke. But I decided I didnt want to take and chances. I bought a HEPA air filter and run it on low 24/7. This cleans the air and helps circulate the heat. I think it was a good purchase, if for nothing other than the added peace of mind.
It was discussed in another thread here:
https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/60999/P22/

This is what i bought:

http://www.amazon.com/Honeywell-50250-99-97-Round-Purifier/dp/B00007E7RY/ref=cm_cmu_pg__header

This is a topic that I've been pretty interested in. I started burning this season in a smoke dragon and did some measurements on particle count within the room. From what i concluded, .5um particle increase during a reload was pretty much negligible. This made me go ahead and get a new EPA stove "lopi revere". I figured if my old smoke dragon didn't increase the particle count in the room, the EPA stove would be the same inside, but better for the outside. If I did get a lot of particles I would have stopped there and forget about burning.

Well, with much excitement I got the revere in, and started burning away. What I found was I actually got more particles inside the room. I'm still doing various testing, but it seems no matter what I do I get particle increase, even if I don't smell smoke. This really confused me since I figured a hot stove would pull air around it through the chimney, and shouldn't increase any fine particles in the room. The only thing I can figure is that with the new stove, the draft isn't as strong and so particles can get into the room. Also since there is the airwash in front it may change the air flow and blow air towards the room when the door is open. As for personal experience during the first few weeks of burning, I did experience a bunch of coughing and sore throat, but that could be because I was staring at the fire all day and the air was dry, or maybe the fumes from the paint affected me. Still testing things out.

So with my long winded answer if you burn, most likely you will have a particle increase in the room. Whether that is bad for your kids, that's a toss up. Cooking bacon inside the house throws tons more particles then burning. If your are really really concerned I wouldn't burn at all. If you want to take the risk, maybe put in a HEPA filter.


For the techies on this forum (seems like there are a few) I'm using a particle counter from www.dylosproducts.com
When I wasn't burning .5um particles were around 1000 or less, when I would burn a mix of mulberry (smoky) and maple it would go up to around 1300 or more if I was really careful with loading. If anyone is interested I can post more data on this.

Don't store your cord wood in the house if you do. It has mold on it.

Needshave said:

Don't store your cord wood in the house if you do. It has mold on it.

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I have about a 1/2 cord in my living room, no mold on a stick.
If anything, any moisture in the wood is evaporated into the house, which in my case is dry to start with. So I get some free humidity.
I also run a large Kenmore console humidifier, still no mold.

Another way to deal with the ash issue is to get an ash vacuum. Some even have HEPA filters.

When my 3 year old son was hospitalized this year twice with pneumonia after installing the stove, I looked at this issue under a microscope and spoke in depth with no less than 6 doctors about the issue. And since I am a licensed health care professional (RN), I think I can look at it from a medically sophisticated angle. Let me first say that we do not believe it was our new wood stove that caused my sons hospitalizations, we suspect it was a mycoplasma pneumonia infection that was not eradicated by the first course of antibiotics.

But let me say what I believe to be some true statements:

Wood heat is not the cleanest way to heat your home, some type of radiant heat, baseboard or flooring for example, would be cleaner.

With a non EPA wood stove and probably an EPA wood stove, exposure to the smoke could be trigger for some asthmatics (particularly severe asthmatics). I think of a child playing outside in the yard with the stove burning while starting or reloading.

With any wood stove, smoke MAY NOT be a trigger for some asthmatics.

The particulate matter from the ashes could affect an asthmatic.

There is not a lot of good science out there on the issue.

As others have pointed out, the wood (inside the home) can contain irritants to asthmatics i.e. mold.

Use caution in extrapolating personal testament out to a large population. If you talk to a non smoker who never had any health problems from smoking and is 79, does that mean it is true for the whole population?

Having said that, here is what I do: I burn is cycles and try not to add wood to the stove until it is in the coaling stage. For me adding wood with a fire going, particularly if you have a log that is close to the length of your firebox, increases the likelihood of smoke back in the house. Burning in cycles also keeps the stuff coming out of your chimney as clean as possible. I clean my ashes out when my children are taking a nap or after they go to bed (or they play in their room for a while). I shut off all ceiling fans and blowers when I do this. I am particularly careful about my technique and only lift the lid on my ash bucket enough to sneak the ashes in. I was going to sprinkle the ash on my lawn (poor mans lime) but I elected to dispose of it this year (I don't have a garden). My children are playing out there.

I believe there is a population out there than will be negatively affected by a wood stove in the home and pray that your child is not one of them.

I reread your first post, unfortunately, I was unable to see it while typing Preschool was new for us this year as well and the frequent infections have been painful.

Is this fall the first year you have burned wood? If not the new variable would be preschool exposures.

Oh, by the way (again trying to look through a scientific filter), there was a lot of unfounded and particularly inflammatory "crap" on the errornet about wood burning.