I don't know much at all about it, but apparently it is made when you burn wood? Is it really a problem? Does anyone here know and care to educate the rest of us?
Dioxin?! What the....
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Minister of Fire
Smoke is nasty. Don’t breathe it. It’s not just dioxin. I’d only be concerned if I were spending every day next to a Smokey fire.
Dioxin inhalation doses from wood combustion in indoor cookfires
Approximately 3 billion people worldwide rely on solid biomass fuels for household cooking and space heating, and approximately 50–60% use wood, often…
Dioxin is bad, bad, really bad. But when you consider the tiny amount of it versus the many kinds of still very bad other stuff that's present in very large amounts in wood smoke, I wouldn't lose sleep over it. All about smoke is bad - simple. Sometimes it can smell nice, though.
After one of those comparatively bad Montana wildfire smoke seasons, I can be coughing up chunks of dioxin, I'm sure - as well as the occasional charred pine cone! It is probably THE worst factor of life in Montana. I don't fear my woodstoves, but I do fear the smoke that can lay like fog for a month or more. Tending a wood fire all day, every day, in a dwelling maybe without even a chimney just cannot be good for one's health either.
After one of those comparatively bad Montana wildfire smoke seasons, I can be coughing up chunks of dioxin, I'm sure - as well as the occasional charred pine cone! It is probably THE worst factor of life in Montana. I don't fear my woodstoves, but I do fear the smoke that can lay like fog for a month or more. Tending a wood fire all day, every day, in a dwelling maybe without even a chimney just cannot be good for one's health either.
Burning anything is bad, so is freezing. No one gets out alive but as mentioned the smoke from a wood fire smells good.
1,4 dioxin is really not an issue. The issue is the chlorinated di benzo dioxins. A number of those are toxic. Sadly they all get grouped together. Unless you are burning chlorinated materials, you won't generate any bad dioxins. If you are burning correctly with a hot fire and char things before turning it down to secondaries, you get essentially no dioxins. They are not a normal byproduct of wood fires.
The morbidity and mortality that comes with eating all of your food raw probably compares unfavorably to the risk of dioxin poisoning as well.
Dioxin and Furans are produced in miniscule amounts anytime a chloride is involved in a combustion event. It was a contaminant that came along for the ride in Agent Orange (the herbicide that was sprayed on Vietnam during the Vietnam war). Its environmentally persistent and the EPA threshold limits are extremely low. They get incinerated at very high temperatures 1500 to 1900F. The lower the combustion temps, the more that are produced. Chloride ions are everywhere including on your french fries (Salt is sodium chloride). Burn at low temps and one of the many byproducts is minute amounts of Dioxins and Furans. Burn something with a lot of chlorides and more is generated. Burning wood saturated with salt will put out more Dioxins and Furans in miniscule amounts. Natural wildfires are going to put out dioxins. A very popular type of plastic used worldwide is PVC, its cheap to make and very stable, you probably have several PVC containers in your cupboard or recycle bin. Burn it at low temps and it puts out a relatively high level of dioxins and furans. Dioxins and Furans are persistent and bio accumulative so they build up in the environment and the food chain. Its persistent so as it moves up the food chain to animals that live longer the concentrations can ramp up. Dioxins and Furans will concentrate up in fish, along with other nasties like mercury from coal emissions and that is the reason many areas have fish consumption advisories.
The big issue is now risk, environmental dioxin is a definite risk but its only out there in very small quantities. My bet is the risk of being impacted by Dioxin in a third world country from cooking fires is very low compared to the other risks like dirty water, lack of public sanitation or starvation. Therefore, with limited resources what should be addressed first?. Obviously with unlimited resources everything should be addressed but that is not the real world.
Dioxin and Furans are measured in parts per trillion (PPT). Few people can envision 1 PPT, Some comparisions I quickly found. I trillion seconds ago was 29700 BC. There is a little more than a trillion dollars in circulation in the US economy. Measuring these values is very difficult so it doesnt take much for an area to be contaminated if there is any trace.
Household cooking fires tend to made with green wood and at relatively low temps. Frequently the fires are unvented and if trash will burn it may get burnt. This will lead to relatively high levels of dioxins and furans in the local atmosphere. Another big source of dioxins used to be pulp and recycled papermills that used chlorine for bleaching pulp white. The industry in the US long ago switched to other bleaching processes and chemicals so they no longer are a significant source. NH did a study of Dioxin generation in the state and the biggest source was outdoor burn barrels that burned trash containing PVC and biomass electric power plants (communities that burned their trash with open burning were banned by that point). One household burn barrel potentially put out more dioxins than a biomass power plant over the course of year. The state banned household burn barrels. Some folks burn trash in outdoor wood boilers and they are effectively running a burn barrel.
So like any risk in the world, there is an incredibly small involuntary risk from Dioxin and Furans,orders of magnitude smaller than the voluntary risks we all take. There are commonsense things that can be done to reduce the risks from Dioxin and furans and to a wood burner, its burn a stove hot within its design, avoid saltwater contaminated wood and do not burn trash.
BTW, Dioxins are somewhat old news, the new news if PFA's, they have similar characteristics and can cause health issues at even lower concentrations (parts per quintrillion). Most fabric protection was made with PFA's until recently, Scotchguard is one popular namebrand. Their nickname is "forever chemicals. Fire fighting foam is another product and grease resistant packaging like the "paper" used to wrap takeout hanburgers probably was made with PFA's. Luckily they are not formed by burning wood but they are the "new dioxin" that is hitting the news. Dupont a major supplier of PFA's are so worried about lawsuits that they spun that business to a new company, Chemours. Lawyers are lining up and lawsuits are being filed.
The big issue is now risk, environmental dioxin is a definite risk but its only out there in very small quantities. My bet is the risk of being impacted by Dioxin in a third world country from cooking fires is very low compared to the other risks like dirty water, lack of public sanitation or starvation. Therefore, with limited resources what should be addressed first?. Obviously with unlimited resources everything should be addressed but that is not the real world.
Dioxin and Furans are measured in parts per trillion (PPT). Few people can envision 1 PPT, Some comparisions I quickly found. I trillion seconds ago was 29700 BC. There is a little more than a trillion dollars in circulation in the US economy. Measuring these values is very difficult so it doesnt take much for an area to be contaminated if there is any trace.
Household cooking fires tend to made with green wood and at relatively low temps. Frequently the fires are unvented and if trash will burn it may get burnt. This will lead to relatively high levels of dioxins and furans in the local atmosphere. Another big source of dioxins used to be pulp and recycled papermills that used chlorine for bleaching pulp white. The industry in the US long ago switched to other bleaching processes and chemicals so they no longer are a significant source. NH did a study of Dioxin generation in the state and the biggest source was outdoor burn barrels that burned trash containing PVC and biomass electric power plants (communities that burned their trash with open burning were banned by that point). One household burn barrel potentially put out more dioxins than a biomass power plant over the course of year. The state banned household burn barrels. Some folks burn trash in outdoor wood boilers and they are effectively running a burn barrel.
So like any risk in the world, there is an incredibly small involuntary risk from Dioxin and Furans,orders of magnitude smaller than the voluntary risks we all take. There are commonsense things that can be done to reduce the risks from Dioxin and furans and to a wood burner, its burn a stove hot within its design, avoid saltwater contaminated wood and do not burn trash.
BTW, Dioxins are somewhat old news, the new news if PFA's, they have similar characteristics and can cause health issues at even lower concentrations (parts per quintrillion). Most fabric protection was made with PFA's until recently, Scotchguard is one popular namebrand. Their nickname is "forever chemicals. Fire fighting foam is another product and grease resistant packaging like the "paper" used to wrap takeout hanburgers probably was made with PFA's. Luckily they are not formed by burning wood but they are the "new dioxin" that is hitting the news. Dupont a major supplier of PFA's are so worried about lawsuits that they spun that business to a new company, Chemours. Lawyers are lining up and lawsuits are being filed.
A problem with "forever chemicals" that persist in animals is concentration up the food chain. As a very rough rule of thumb, it takes about 10x the biomass to support the next level up the chain. Obviously this will vary with the species involved and herbivores consume more than carnivores. For an example using this rule of thumb it would take 100lbs of forage to support 10lbs of deer biomass which supports 1lb of cougar. And .1 lb of turkey vulture when it eats the cougar, but that's not it's primary diet.
What this means is that the forever chemicals get concentrated up the food chain... the deer would have 10x the chemicals that the plants have, and the cougar would have 10x the levels of the deer it's eating or 100x what's in the plants. The actual numbers would vary of course, but it illustrates the problem.
Some ocean food chains can have another level. Tuna for example generally eat fish that are predators themselves.
What this means is that the forever chemicals get concentrated up the food chain... the deer would have 10x the chemicals that the plants have, and the cougar would have 10x the levels of the deer it's eating or 100x what's in the plants. The actual numbers would vary of course, but it illustrates the problem.
Some ocean food chains can have another level. Tuna for example generally eat fish that are predators themselves.
The air we breathe is just a small part of the problem. Water is where we really are screwed especially with the forever chemicals. all food sources require water and none of it is clean.
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