Wood burners triple harmful indoor air pollution, study finds
Exclusive: Burners should be sold with health warnings, say scientists who found tiny particles flooding into rooms
A bummer of a new study report:
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WoodBurnerInWI
Feeling the Heat
Saw that article today. Not sure how including labels and warnings about wood burners being a "health" hazard is going to make it somehow better. Smoke and dust and debris in your home is part of the wood burning lifestyle. That's why we all use certain techniques to deal with these unpleasant things to make it bearable. For example making sure your chimney height is tall enough to ensure proper draft. Those who don't want to deal with it don't have a wood burning device in their home, simple as that. The occasional smoke in the house when I open the stove door (especially on those warmer days) is one reason we have an HEPA air purifier in the stove room. It does a great job, even though I'm sure it can't remove every last particulate in the air. That's just one way I help mitigate some of the indoor air pollution my stove produces.
“Contains chemicals that are known to cause cancer in the state of California.”
Good thing I am in Michigan
Good thing I am in Michigan
SpaceBus
Minister of Fire
So carcinogens aren't the same in Michigan? Come on now, you know that ash and other VOC's are not healthy to breathe.
Filtering indoor air is crucial to good air quality no matter what your heat source is.
I do know this, I had asthma as a kid, which stopped my dad from burning wood, no issue nowadays, grew out of it I guess. but as far as things that are bad for you, I think the stove is overall low on the list.
I meant the above statement as humor.
I meant the above statement as humor.
fvhowler
Feeling the Heat
This is why I usually set up for long burns. I open the stove 3 times per day for reload. To me, removing ashes introduces more stuff into the air than simply reloading. Another reason to keep your pipes/chimney clean.
Hate to say it but everything fun is some level of bad for you
This is an observational "study" of 20 homes, comparing indoor pollution during the time that the stove was used with the time it wasn't used, in the same home. There are many potential confounding factors. Air quality may be better when nobody is home to use the stove (eg people smoke indoors, cook indoors, stir up dust by walking, vacuum, etc). Obviously, people use their stove more when it's cold out; that's also when windows are closed, neighbors are burning, and at certain times of day.
It is difficult to draw sweeping conclusions with an n of 20 and no randomization or external control group.
www.mdpi.com
It is difficult to draw sweeping conclusions with an n of 20 and no randomization or external control group.
Indoor Air Pollution from Residential Stoves: Examining the Flooding of Particulate Matter into Homes during Real-World Use
This study concerns the levels of particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM1) released by residential stoves inside the home during ‘real world’ use. Focusing on stoves that were certified by the UK’s Department of Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), PM sensors were placed in the vicinity of 20...
www.mdpi.com
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Ctwoodtick
Minister of Fire
I’ve toyed with getting a Hepa air purifier. My Jotul insert has always spilled some smoke/stuff on reloads. Do the air purifiers do good job of mitigating this?
That, and reading this makes me think that adding more length to my shorter liner should be moved up further on the list for me.
That, and reading this makes me think that adding more length to my shorter liner should be moved up further on the list for me.
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SpaceBus
Minister of Fire
Our air filter makes a big difference. We don't run it in the same place every day, but we have two that we move through the house during the week.
I'll take an entire winter inside burning a stove versus a week in a smog filled city.
Ctwoodtick
Minister of Fire
Nice- I just ordered one. That and will try to fix draft in the not so distant future. Thanks
Grizzerbear
Minister of Fire
SpaceBus
Minister of Fire
Kind of, in the sense that fine sand can cause lung cancer, but there are also a ton of materials that humans can use that don't cause cancer. Using teflon coated pans is very toxic and cancer causing, but they are cheaper than good steel and cast iron pans. You can avoid cancer causing agents if you are careful. I applaud California for forcing manufacturers to disclose all the nasty stuff they put in products.
I'm sure I don't know if airborne particulate matter 2.5 is harmful enough to warrant excessive regulation.
The US EPA used the 1993 Harvard Six Cities study as evidence to significantly expand regulations regarding PM 2.5.
The study is available here https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199312093292401
The problem with the "scientific study" is lack of transparency with the data and the ability to replicate the results.
The EPA wanted to gain more control and issue more restrictive regulations.
Again, I don't know how bad PM 2.5 is for human health.
And "they" don't know either.
Check this out https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/01/23/secret-science-under-attack-part-2/
I'm done ranting for now.
The US EPA used the 1993 Harvard Six Cities study as evidence to significantly expand regulations regarding PM 2.5.
The study is available here https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199312093292401
The problem with the "scientific study" is lack of transparency with the data and the ability to replicate the results.
The EPA wanted to gain more control and issue more restrictive regulations.
Again, I don't know how bad PM 2.5 is for human health.
And "they" don't know either.
Check this out https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/01/23/secret-science-under-attack-part-2/
I'm done ranting for now.
I am going to start a new thread in the Green Room on HEPA filters where people can post what they own and provide a short review on them.
jatoxico
Minister of Fire
A biological response in living systems is always going to be difficult to precisely reproduce, especially in real world exposure scenarios. But the idea that all the decisions made by regulatory authorities around the world about particulates (or any other scientific evaluation for that matter) was based upon this or any other single study isn't correct.
This is an observational "study" of 20 homes, comparing indoor pollution during the time that the stove was used with the time it wasn't used, in the same home. There are many potential confounding factors. Air quality may be better when nobody is home to use the stove (eg people smoke indoors, cook indoors, stir up dust by walking, vacuum, etc). Obviously, people use their stove more when it's cold out; that's also when windows are closed, neighbors are burning, and at certain times of day.
It is difficult to draw sweeping conclusions with an n of 20 and no randomization or external control group.
Indoor Air Pollution from Residential Stoves: Examining the Flooding of Particulate Matter into Homes during Real-World Use
This study concerns the levels of particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM1) released by residential stoves inside the home during ‘real world’ use. Focusing on stoves that were certified by the UK’s Department of Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), PM sensors were placed in the vicinity of 20...
Agree.
Here was my "favorite" part of the journal article:
"All participants used dried and seasoned logs, but the sizes varied. There was also a diversity of kindling used, taking the form of firelighters, newspapers, balls of paper, twigs, sawdust, packing cardboard, greeting cards, and even empty egg boxes."
Without a measurement of wood moisture content (they seem not to know what "dried and seasoned" really means, usually), and without excluding poor burning practices -- greeting cards!? -- this simply isn't useful data. It is like noting all the people who text and drive and then concluding that cars are unsafe and should come with a warning label.
Indoor particulate studies would be useful, but this isn't one of them.
Disagree. The particulates increase on reloading. I doubt it makes a difference what was burned several hours prior. More significantly, it's very plausible. I mean, you know there's more ash in your house when you burn. We also know that inhaling particulates is harmful. So it wouldn't be at all surpring...
My thought was that people who burn greeting cards probably have other poor burning practices, including lack of maintenance, reloading at the wrong point in the burn, not loading quickly, etc. Also, burning wet wood and reloading on excess coals subsequent to a load of wet wood will increase particulates, I assume, since there are more unburned particles put into the air generally when combustion isn't efficient.
Yes, we all know that particulates increase when you open the door, but the study aimed to quantify that, and if you want an accurate quantification you need to eliminate extraneous variables (like moisture content) and simple user error, which wasn't done. That was my aim in making the analogy with the car: yes, we know a car can be dangerous, but taking poor driving skills as evidence that cars themselves are dangerous ('should require a warning sticker on the product') is not a valid conclusion.
This study purported to make a claim about stoves (as in "It may be that with regulatory encouragement stove designs can be modified in a way that limits such instances" and other similar conclusions about the hardware itself), but took as evidence only user's experiences; the only legitimate conclusions that follow are about user knowledge, education, etc. -- none of which was mentioned. It is simply (well, maybe not so simply) misleading science: it claimed to be studying stoves, but was actually (unwittingly, it seems) studying people.
Yes, we all know that particulates increase when you open the door, but the study aimed to quantify that, and if you want an accurate quantification you need to eliminate extraneous variables (like moisture content) and simple user error, which wasn't done. That was my aim in making the analogy with the car: yes, we know a car can be dangerous, but taking poor driving skills as evidence that cars themselves are dangerous ('should require a warning sticker on the product') is not a valid conclusion.
This study purported to make a claim about stoves (as in "It may be that with regulatory encouragement stove designs can be modified in a way that limits such instances" and other similar conclusions about the hardware itself), but took as evidence only user's experiences; the only legitimate conclusions that follow are about user knowledge, education, etc. -- none of which was mentioned. It is simply (well, maybe not so simply) misleading science: it claimed to be studying stoves, but was actually (unwittingly, it seems) studying people.
Nealm66
Minister of Fire
SpaceBus
Minister of Fire
It's kind of like cigarette smoking. There are thousands of people that smoke for decades without any issue, and then there are people that die from second hand smoke.
It is statistics; not all die younger, some live longer. There is always a distribution of outcomes, in particular when biological systems (i.e. you and me) are at play, even if other variables (wood mc etc) are the same.
It's like trees; not all pines in a production forest get to be the same length, height, trunk diameter (or age if they are not cut down), even if circumstances are made to be as equal for each tree as possible.
So the explanation for all those that survived a life of wood burning is already there, in the shape of the distribution of lifetimes. What would be interesting to see is if that shape is different for those burning wood and those that are not. THAT has been determined to be the case for smokers, and that might warrant regulation. Might, I am not convinced yet, but this is how that reasoning would go.
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