Woodburners give you cancer?

  • Active since 1995, Hearth.com is THE place on the internet for free information and advice about wood stoves, pellet stoves and other energy saving equipment.

    We strive to provide opinions, articles, discussions and history related to Hearth Products and in a more general sense, energy issues.

    We promote the EFFICIENT, RESPONSIBLE, CLEAN and SAFE use of all fuels, whether renewable or fossil.
Status
Not open for further replies.
jatoxico said:
If you live in an area with a significant number of wood burners and/or are prone to inversions the problem is real.
Click to expand...

Yes, the problem is real because the vast majority or wood burners are burning in smoke dragons, OWBs, open fires, fireplaces, or stoves that are operated improperly and/or with poor wood or poor draft... and NOT burning up to the far-lower emissions potential of newer stoves or low-emission OWBs.

It is not burning wood per se that is the problem, but the WAY that wood is being burned. Think of how much more efficient and cleaner, compared to past decades, that cars, power plants, factories and furnaces are now burning. Rather than being banned outright, it was realized that with respect to particulates all these modes of combustion could be far cleaner.

Wood stoves have likewise come a long way, but the low-particulate potential of newer woodburning technology is not even close to being realized.
 
jatoxico said:
Different regions, different scenarios.
.
Click to expand...

Of course. I was referring to the area cited in the article, London.

A recession in non-industrialized upstate NY probably isn't going to impact particulate levels at all, as it would in greater London, or better yet, industrial and urban regions of China.
 
log_cabin said:
Look carefully at the "start here Your Research" (p=0.56) means you get odds no better than flipping a coin (50/50)
Click to expand...

That's actually part of the joke. The artist (of Piled Higher, Deeper, AKA - PHD Comics) has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering and used to teach at Cal Tech, so he knows about p-values and the risk of spurious conclusions. The effectively meaningless p-value is thrown in to exaggerate the absurdity of the increasingly alarmist reporting.
 
firefighterjake said:
So you're saying the best way to prevent global warning isn't to become a pirate as a career choice? ;)
Click to expand...

I have that T-shirt from way back when. :)

139092366_ce5b410228_o.jpg
 
Another seed being sown.....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-41439268

At least the proposed legislation is being based loosely on research, such as;
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...icles-may-enter-your-blood-and-cause-disease/
And not just because a small but vocal minority get busy on twitter.

Another 6 years, so plenty of time to get the industry in shape and lower particulate emissions? I don't know many people who have cat stoves in the UK, but most have at least a secondary burn system stove (they are the only legal ones that can be sold here).

I suppose this will ultimately drive the adoption of things like cat stoves over here, I just wonder if it will be enough to satisfy?
 
ive come to the conclusion that everything is going to kill you in some way, shape, or form.
What these studies don't include is the fact that air was much dirtier 40 years ago than it is today in North America and Western Europe.
But life expectancy has also grow. In the last 40 years due to better diets, better medicine practices and better education, at what point in humanity to we keep going until we hit that tipping point to things being unpractical? That's the million dollar question. Wood burning is so minuscule is the big picture, but someone with a load enough voice can pitch the idea that it's bad because we all know fire is dangerous, and know matter what, whether your the safest burning or the most wreck less burner we all know that a fire can take everything we own away in an instant
 
Environmental regulation has been the best thing that has happened to wood burners since the discovery that wood was flammable. (I know there's a couple tinfoil hat wearers with old smoke dragons who disagree, but if they spent a week running my stove they'd change teams just like that.)

Don't panic, lads. ;)
 
If you want tinfoil hat.....the campaign to ban woodburners is being secretly run by the oil majors to force us all into being subservient to them. And HM Queen is one of the lizard people trying to control our minds.

However that aside, the picture in the UK is that the use of woodburners is very much a niche market. When north sea gas came on stream in the late 70's large swathes of the urban areas transferred over to natural gas heating. A lot of houses had fireplaces either removed or boarded up. There has been a recent increase in use, but as the price of a proper installation can reach over £4000, it is generally not considered a routine part of the heating makeup.

While I accept there is more to do in getting people learning about dry wood and MC for burning (as well as burning technique) and I accept that air particulates are a problem for health, I wonder whether banning woodburners in London (which will almost certainly end up being considered in all regions) will have much of an impact. I work in and around London for around 1wk per month and cannot say that I have noticed the smell of smouldering wood. Perhaps it is masked by the other smells a large busy metropolis can emit.

Looking at the statements from the Ministry in question, they have lost a court case about putting together a proper strategy for reducing air pollution, so are grabbing at all kinds of straws to desperately seem like they are doing "something"
 
jetsam said:
Don't panic, lads
Click to expand...
You let Ashful take one Polaroid of you with a colander on your head at a college frat party and it haunts you forever
 
kennyp2339 said:
You let Ashful take one Polaroid of you with a colander on your head at a college frat party and it haunts you forever
Click to expand...

Colanders don't offer safe or effective protection from rays, too many holes, you need continuous layers like foil, at least three layers thick. ;)
 
Simmo6108 said:
Hi All - Over the pond here in the UK, our tabloid (and broadsheet) press appear to have gotten hold of some info within a report written by the Royal College of Physicians regarding the health problems of poor air quality. There appears to be some linking of the increase in wood-burning to cancer and respiratory illness.

As I type this I am looking at my (DEFRA) smokeless zone approved stove burn away, giving us a lot of heat with little or no smoke either inside or outside. I cant help but feel this is the start of the government saying that an increase in wood-burning = decrease in use of taxable fuels, or is that just being a tinfoil hatter conspiracy theorist?

Do you face the same issues in the states, or is it just us "europeans" being soft?
Click to expand...
 
Woodstoves seem to have a wide ranging span of particulate emissions. My harman TL300(emissions rate of 1.1Gms /Hr) seems to burn all kinds of wood to a fine powder and not much of it. While my Englander NC-30 is rated 1.63 Gms /HR and claims to have the lowest emissions on the market seems to leave behind a lot more ashes and unburned coals and requires more frequent ash removal from a relatively same size stove.
 
Hi Simmons,
You're not quite right, at the moment it's legal to sell, and use Non exempt stoves outside smoke control zones and these don't have secondary burn. One of the changes Sadiq is calling for is to pull forward the change to only selling the stoves meeting eu pollution regs - ones like, and actually tighter/better than current DEFRA exempt stuff. That seems good to me.

Sadiq has already backed down on banning stoves for domestic use though, according to an article in the Guardian. Which I'm also glad about.

The trouble with wood stoves is they aren't clean if they aren't used correctly, no matter how they are made. So education of the numpties to burn dry wood, clean wood, small splits and burn hot, would be worthwhile.... Although it will never stop some of those idiots.
 
The opportunity has been in front of y'all this whole thread but not mentioned yet. Cow Farts have been studied and have been determined to be the biggest contributor to greenhouse gases and I am sure cancer. So if we don't do something to keep cows from farting it wont matter which fuel we choose to heat our homes.
 
"Take monkeys, and rabbits,
And little white rats, shoot 'em full of this and that
There's cancer in your food,
Cancer in the air, cancer in your cigarettes
Take vitamin C, B-12 and E, for your eyes, teeth, skin and bones
But, when the good Lord calls,
You can forget it all, don't you know you're good as gone"

"Everybody Gotta Go" by Atlanta Rhythm Section
 
  • Like
Reactions: Fort Wisers
What are the effects of the pollutants from the heavy equipment used to extract petroleum products, or the effects of the heavy metal extraction and off washes used to produce solar panels and various battery technologies. Etc Etc
I'm not knocking those forms, what I'm saying is NO form of energy use comes without an environmental impact and all forms have an argument why they're the better choice.

As someone said above, living gives you cancer and heart attacks etc etc. I know of people who burned wood their entire lives and lived into their 90s. I also know people who burned wood all their lives and died in their 40s.
"Statistics" say eggs give you heart disease and burnt food gives you cancer, my grandfather ate eggs and toast, heavily burnt, his entire life and died at 89. We must eat more and more fruit, except then it's rotting the teeth out of peoples skulls.
Can science really predicate these topics to any real certainty? Maybe the sample size and test life cycles are simply too small to really see a trend.
If science has it 100% right then why is butter bad for you one year and the savoir food the next?

EVERY form of human activity affects the earth on some level, most of the time not for the better, even if we're sold that it is.
I'm not saying we can't find ways of improving the way we do things but I do find it frustrating when lobbyists/government pick on one topic while turning a blind eye to others. Unless we're all willing to head back to the bush for very minimalist type living (which, maybe that's really the way we need to be thinking, cutting back in general) then a lot of these judgements fall on a deaf ear for me, personally.

One thing is for certain, and you don't need a PhD or a series of scientific tests to see this, we've made a mess of what we have, all of us. Just look at the litter on the sides of the highways these days as a simple example. We all have a stake to claim in this world and thus we all have a responsibility to do what we can to, at the very least, reduce even just the most obvious ways we make messes..
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: bfast250
Randy Acton said:
The opportunity has been in front of y'all this whole thread but not mentioned yet. Cow Farts have been studied and have been determined to be the biggest contributor to greenhouse gases and I am sure cancer. So if we don't do something to keep cows from farting it wont matter which fuel we choose to heat our homes.
Click to expand...

Cow farts do contribute to global warming. The problem is we have so many cows, especially on huge feedlots (for beef) and huge dairy farms. That's because there are over 7 billion people on planet earth. But it's not true that other contributions to greenhouse gases don't matter. It all matters because greenhouse gases are cumulative.

What you are saying makes about as much sense as the guy who says the pinhole leak in his trucks gas tank "doesn't matter" because his truck only gets 6 mpg anyway!

Burning wood instead of electricity or fossil fuel to heat your house reduces greenhouse gases that are the major cause of global warming.
 
Last edited:
Randy Acton said:
The opportunity has been in front of y'all this whole thread but not mentioned yet. Cow Farts have been studied and have been determined to be the biggest contributor to greenhouse gases and I am sure cancer. So if we don't do something to keep cows from farting it wont matter which fuel we choose to heat our homes.
Click to expand...

I have been doing my part for the cause this whole time.

Image1252727056.jpg
burger.jpg
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • Like
Reactions: redktmrider and Seasoned Oak
I generally get a chuckle on wood smoke gives you cancer yet one of the most popular and tasty foods is smoked meats that are flavored with polyaromatic hydrocarbons resulting from incomplete combustion of wood fires. If someone came up with an industrial process to soak meat with identically manufactured chemicals I expect they would be banned but make it natural and people line up to get it.
 
peakbagger said:
I generally get a chuckle on wood smoke gives you cancer yet one of the most popular and tasty foods is smoked meats that are flavored with polyaromatic hydrocarbons resulting from incomplete combustion of wood fires.
Click to expand...

Ingesting is not the same as inhaling.

That is, your digestive tract deals with many chemicals with enzymes and acidity. The lungs do not.

Also breathing is a continual process. Eating is not.

And do be aware that humans, due to a few thousand years of natural selection from eating food cooked over camp fires have actually developed more resistance to carcinogenic compounds caused by combustion on food, but have not had time to adapt yet to those same compounds in the air in urban areas that traps problem compounds locally in the air, which is a more recent historical development. That is, tribal groups throughout history just let their camp fire air blow into the wilderness for millennium. Not everyone today has that open space luxury to insulate them from their neighbor's stupidity.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Seasoned Oak
The real issue is not if wood fires cause air quality issues (because they do, as do any type of combustion, such as oil, gas, etc), but rather if those issues are relevant compared to other sources of pollution.

After all, Volkswagon and their diesels and lies certainly do and did contributed to air pollution. And which is more common? Wood stoves, or diesels cars?

But, then again, there is the problem of individual affects. I walked outside a few days ago and almost passed out. The entire neighborhood was awash in smoke. There was coal black smoke coming from a neighbor's chimney. I can not even state how many times I have had to gag with low air quality here due to the absolute crap that people burn in their stoves. I live in Hungary. Regulations about air quality are a joke. No one seems to know that they need to not burn wet wood, painted wood, composites (OSB), etc. I have seen people take wood deliveries in the fall and start to burn it. So, yes, regulations for air quality are needed when individuals are that dumb. And they need to be enforced.
 
  • Like
Reactions: WoodyIsGoody
One mans pollution is another mans beef jerky and smoked hams!
 
St. Coemgen said:
Ingesting is not the same as inhaling.

.
Click to expand...
I hope not ,my favorite seasoning is smoked salt. i also use liquid smoke in cooking. And what doesnt taste better on a charcoal grill. I dont smoke tobacco but i smoke food.
 
I have spent a few trips at smoke offs and while occasionally ingesting some of the product, I got to deal with the haze from the smokers and inevitably portable generators. It has gotten so bad at some events that they ban generators.

Polyaromatic hydrocarbons do taste great but do a bit or research and you may change your mind about eating them 24/7 https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2014-03/documents/pahs_factsheet_cdc_2013.pdf
https://www.worldhealth.net/news/barbecue_meat_chemicalsgrilling_and_canc/

Everything in moderation
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom
Back