Its been more than three centuries since John Evelyn wrote the essay "Fumifugium: or the inconvenience of the air and smoke of London Dissipated" in which he was trying to convince the King to regulate wood burning emissions due to the air pollution it was causing in London. A century later Percival Pott, a surgeon from England linked cancer to wood burning. Yet the effects of wood burning are still quite large both in developed and developing countries. In developing countries it is more of an indoor air quality issue, as wood is used for both cooking and heating, and the carbon monoxide, particulate matter, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. In developed countries, where cleaner fuels and better combustion technologies are available, it is more of an outdoor air quality issue. Despite efforts in cleaning up industry, cars, trucks, buses, very few "romantic" users of wood burning are causing huge effects on air quality across many cities. In the U.S., for example, wood burning contributes to a surprising 33 percent of wintertime fine particles (PM2.5) in the Bay Area. In Denmark it is thought to contribute to 47 percent of all Danish PM2.5 emissions. In Santiago, Chile, wood burning accounts for 49 percent of primary wintertime PM2.5 emissions
Recently most Chileans were surprised with the fact that Santiago was not the most polluted city in Chile, but actually not even in the top 10. Many cities in Southern Chile, mostly only known to Chileans, have pollution levels that are 50 percent more than Santiago. This has led the government to prepare an ambitious program to overhaul old stoves, dry the wood, as this type of heating is saving the people thousands of dollars, but costing the government millions.
Despite worldwide efforts in implementing cleaner fuels, reducing emissions in the industrial sector, placing particulate filters in buses and trucks, switching to hybrid and natural gas buses, electric and hybrid cars, unless wood burning is addressed as a key contributor to air pollution, we'll be stuck with mediocre levels of air pollution. What's the point of spending money on all clean technology, when it is clearly more cost-effective to clean up residential wood burning?
Recently, the San JoaquÃn Air Pollution Control District (which manages the air quality for some of the most polluted cities in the United States) revised their wood burning ban rule 4901 to make it more stringent. The rule bans wood burning when PM2.5 is predicted to exceed 30ug/m3 (under the 35ug/m3 daily EPA standard). In the first year since it was implemented the results were remarkable, a 44 percent reduction in bad air days. In my years working in air pollution I've never seen a single measure with such effectiveness in reducing pollution.
What can we learn about experiences worldwide in reducing wood burning emissions? First off, that wood needs to be addressed officially as a fuel, and therefore regulated in its quality and sources. Green and wet wood both increased emissions, and reduces heating capacity. It also is linked to deforestation, as it is harvested as a heating source but not replenished. Changes need to occur in wood burning stove technologies, as more efficient stoves both burn cleaner, cause less indoor air pollution problems, and require less wood to generate the same amount of heat. And that in large cities, where a single stove can generate more than 1500 USD/year in environmental externalities, we should think about outright bans in wood burning. In Santiago 8 percent of the population uses wood burning stoves, yet contribute to 49 percent of the pollution. 71 percent of them are in the top 10 percent income bracket, since their large homes are too costly to heat due to their large size. Nighttime flow of emissions from the rich part of town causes this pollution to accumulate in the poor part of town, reaching over 120ug/m3 of 24h PM2.5 (almost 4 times the US standard). Indeed, wood burning is an environmental justice issue that can be solved easily with a ban of its use in Santiago.
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Thanks for the article, Marcelo
The summary says that 79% was from human activity. The full paper shows the proportion from various sources on Dec 26-28 and Jan 4-6 in Fresno and Bakersfield. In Fresno, 70% of particles were from wood burning, 11% from diesel, 8% from gasoline vehicles, 11% from meat cooking and 1% from natural gas. In Bakersfield, 51% was woodsmoke, 15% diesel, 15% gasoline vehicles, 14% meat cooking, 1% road dust and 3% natural gas combustion.
Fresno, Dec 26-28 was most polluted - average 40 ug/m3 of which 69% was woodsmoke. Most health effects – heart attacks and lung diseases, strokes, middle ear infections are proportion to the particle concentration.
Introducing limited burn bans when high pollution is forecast has generated many benefits – in Fresno about $400 million and $200 million a year in Bakersfield just for the reductions in death rates -http://www.csufresno.edu/ccchhs/institutes_programs/CVHPI/publications/WoodBurningReport.pdf
Thanks for an excellent article, Marcelo!
in CA, 97% of this type of particulate pollution is actually caused by diesel trucks, and only 3% by wood burned in fireplaces/stoves, yet diesel trucks were left to continue blackening our lungs and air, while residents were forbidden from installing wood-burning fireplaces in their homes. so the issue is not really the same across the board, and big corporate interests definitely trump health and welfare here in the US...
NOT TRUE. (where do you get your stats?)
On certain winter nights, MOST PM2.5 is from wood burning, NOT diesel trucks. If you live in a port city (such as San Diego) right next to a shipyard, then your figures might be correct... but in the inlands, such as The San Joaquin Valley, wood burning is the prime culprit.
http://oehha.ca.gov/multimedia/biomon/pdf/1208diesel.pdf
I misspoke because although only 3% was residential fireplaces, only 84% was diesel trucks, there are also things like wildfires that make up the difference. I can't find the LA Times article that showed the 3% number, sorry.
where do you get your stats and what are they?
it always comes down to industry and big oil getting a free pass and individuals having to sacrifice, this is just one more example.
Last year, he used the equivalent of 3000 kWh of gas to heat his home, in Melbourne, Australia. This year, he installed air conditioners - ended up with a warmer house - and measured electricity consumption of 328 kWh – a tiny fraction of what you can generate from the average PV system - www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/why-i-have-six-air-conditioners
i don't disagree that these heat extraction systems are super smart and was recommending them to my sister yesterday, in fact, but they are not nearly as easy to widely implement as solar thermal at the moment.
besides, "electric heat" does not generally refer to heat pump/extraction systems, as used in the blog post. it refers to electric radiant heat, which pulls enormous amounts of power. that is what i was replying to.
You've identified a few of the costs associated with the burning of wood, and a few benefits of ending the practice in at least some locations. But only a few.
And you've identified none of the costs associated with the alternative sources of energy. Is someone being encouraged to give up some non-renewable sources of wood in favor of renewable wind-generated electricity? Or is someone being encouraged to give up highly sustainable, completely renewable sources of wood in favor or heating oil, or coal-generated electricity? Or electricity produced by burning natural gas extracted from the Earth through fracking?
No argument against wood burning can be a serious argument without a better analysis of costs and benefits. And a focus on particulate matter alone is far from satisfactory.
Burning wood can't be possibly sustainable if the resultant methane emissions cause more global warming than other forms of heating. The UNEP/WMO have recommended a package of measures including a ban on the open burning of agricultural waste, phasing out log-burning heaters in developed countries and mandatory diesel filters on vehicles.
If you are interested in costs and benefits, including the effect on the climate, see the recent paper in Atmospheric Pollution research - http://www.atmospolres.com/articles/Volume2/issue3/APR-11-033.pdf This paper from Australia shows that domestic wood heaters increase both health costs and global warming.
But at a minimum, some *summary* of the costs/benefits of wood burning, with some comparison to other widely *available* energy options, should be stated IN the article itself; and ideally it would be accompanied by relevant links so that folks can follow up.
In Santiago bad air days can demand you to leave your car at home (20% of cars can be restricted). Wood burning is also banned those dayes Yet only 10% of wood burning stoves (11,000 stoves) account for all the cars in Santiago's emissions (1.1 million cars).
Electrical heating would generate emissions in our current chilean energy grid at a rate of 0.3g/KWh. Therefore normalized for heat generated compared to a wood burning stove, electrical heating has large emissions too, and by far the largest carbon footprint.
If I lived in a lightly populated area I would buy a pellet stove using biomass waste, and would be happy to say that's sustainable. But in Santiago I know if I use that stove will emit PM that will increase my neighborhoods pollution problems, and that at night that pollution will be transported and suffocate poor neighborhoods. So in Santiago.. we must ban it's use. It's me trying to save money on my heating bill of my large home at the cost of the lungs of impoverished children. An that can't be sustainable.
You cannot simply list a bunch of things that are "wrong" with wood-burning, and claim to have therefore demonstrated that people shouldn't burn wood. There are lots of locations around the world and countless contexts in which, I assure you, burning local wood is a vastly more sustainable choice than the other available options.
There are LOTS of places in the US and Canada, for example, where most of the readers of this essay will be living, where PM is really not a health or environmental problem - but the emissions and carbon footprint of coal-fired electrical plants ARE, both health and environmental problems. And some folks there wisely choose wood. With no ill-effects or potential harm to their neighbors.
Thanks to essays such as this, we will now have some under-informed folks who imagine themselves to be advocates for the environment going around saying that it's always wrong to burn wood for heat. And that is simply untrue.
I've no doubt you are correct, that the PM from wood-burning in Santiago IS a major health problem, but as you acknowledge, the alternative, hooking up to Chile's electrical grid, isn't sustainable either.
And when confronted with 2 or more unsustainable options, that comparative cost/benefit analysis you neglected to provide becomes even more essential to making wise decisions.
Linus, my neighbor also turns on his heater, and I measured the number of particles (mostly carcinogenic) increase by a factor of 8 in my back yard. Unacceptable. You are the canary and should demand your town to look into wood burning emissions...
As you probably note, asthma rates are skyrocketing. Any smoke, from fireplaces to cigarettes, inflame the human lungs. You did mankind and planet Earth an awesome service. Science predicts, in a mere 50 years, Earth will be a forest-less planet. This is as dangerous as it gets for mankind and Earth. The best...
The deforestation of the Earth's terrestrial ecosystems for any reason, essentially kills that much of the Earth's living and life giving body. Our terrestrial, forested ecosystems are the Earth's oxygen and fresh water factories. All trees have jobs to perform for Earth and man. They sequester C02 and methane in their living bodies while releasing oxygen and cooling water vapor that cools the leaves, the soil and the area. They are also in the business of making rain and clouds that block the heat of the sun from the Earth.
Upon deforestation, that ecosystem dies and will never be the same, ever again. To-date, man cannot re-create an ecosystem. Upon deforestation, the climate heats up and dries out. All ecosystems are integrated, and they all have loops and feedbacks to both the climate and the atmosphere, and they all, altogether create the very life zone of Earth or the biosphere.