It's understandable that people enjoy having fires in their fireplaces.
Those flickering flames are beautiful, hypnotic, comforting and cozy,
not to mention toasty warm.
All I ask is that those who indulge in this age-old pleasure observe
one little act of conscience: VENT YOUR EMISSIONS INTO YOUR OWN LIVING
SPACE. You should be the ones who have to inhale all that smoke, rather than inflicting it on the rest of us. It seems only fair to me.
In order for us to coexist peaceably and pleasantly with our neighbors,
there are rules that restrict our behavior. For example, it is against
the law for you to let weeds flourish in your yard. It is against the
law for you not to shovel your sidewalk. It is against the law to play loud music at late-night parties. It's against
the law for your barking dogs to disturb those around you. It is against the law to store your own
car on your own lawn. We have standards. They require that we show a little bit of consideration for each other.
It is against the law to trespass, to commit assault or to endanger the lives of others, but that is exactly what woodburning does: It creeps onto our property and demonstrably damages our bodies and shortens our lives. It can -- and does -- dramatically affect our quality of life.
Why do we permit a relatively few people to have such a horrendous impact on our shared environment?
It would be classier of my neighbors to come on over and shit in my yard (bring the whole family) than to inundate me, and everyone else, with their sooty, toxic waste materials. Having a fire in this day and age is a "personal freedom" we should no longer tolerate.
FIRE AND NICE
I realize that when you're sitting inside at the hearth -- aglow with pleasure, innocently enjoying a winter evening -- you don't really sense that you are ravaging the world outside your door.
But you are. The air all around
your home is thick with smoke. To anyone who knows what this pollution
does to his body, it is sickening to be within blocks of your glowing
little tableaux of self-satisfied domesticity.
Health and air-quality officials across the country are concerned about the smoke that pours each winter from the nearly 45 million home chimneys and 10 million wood stoves.
Inhaling wood smoke appears to be at least as dangerous as inhaling tobacco smoke, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Its study concluded that breathing wood smoke particles during a brisk afternoon walk is equivalent to smoking 4 to 16 cigarettes.
INFLAMMATORY DATA
The federal government estimates that a single fireplace operating for an hour will generate 4,300 times more fine particulate pollution than 30 cigarettes, says David Brown, Public Health Toxicologist at Fairfield University.
Wood smoke contains many of the same chemicals as cigarette smoke, including carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, hazardous metals, and known carcinogens such as formaldehyde, dioxin, benzene, and toluene, the agency states.
IT BURNS ME UP
The EPA maintains that the use of wood for residential heating contributes up to 50 percent of the deadliest particulate organic air pollutants during the winter, which are highly carcinogenic at relatively low levels, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. (In areas where wood is the principal heating fuel, as much as 80 percent of this category of pollutants is produced in home fireplaces, the Olympic Clean Air Agency in Washington State reports.)
I noticed that as soon as nighttime lows hit 50 degrees a few weeks ago, the fireplaces went into high gear. People can hardly wait.
It is against the law to trespass, to commit assault or to endanger the lives of others, but that is exactly what woodburning does: It creeps onto our property and demonstrably damages our bodies and shortens our lives. It can -- and does -- dramatically affect our quality of life.
Why do we permit a relatively few people to have such a horrendous impact on our shared environment?
It would be classier of my neighbors to come on over and shit in my yard (bring the whole family) than to inundate me, and everyone else, with their sooty, toxic waste materials. Having a fire in this day and age is a "personal freedom" we should no longer tolerate.
FIRE AND NICE
I realize that when you're sitting inside at the hearth -- aglow with pleasure, innocently enjoying a winter evening -- you don't really sense that you are ravaging the world outside your door.
 |
| So innocent, so classy, so darned inviting! |
Health and air-quality officials across the country are concerned about the smoke that pours each winter from the nearly 45 million home chimneys and 10 million wood stoves.
Inhaling wood smoke appears to be at least as dangerous as inhaling tobacco smoke, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Its study concluded that breathing wood smoke particles during a brisk afternoon walk is equivalent to smoking 4 to 16 cigarettes.
INFLAMMATORY DATA
The federal government estimates that a single fireplace operating for an hour will generate 4,300 times more fine particulate pollution than 30 cigarettes, says David Brown, Public Health Toxicologist at Fairfield University.
Wood smoke contains many of the same chemicals as cigarette smoke, including carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, hazardous metals, and known carcinogens such as formaldehyde, dioxin, benzene, and toluene, the agency states.
We don't let smokers anywhere near us anymore. Why do we tolerate these
bigger, badder "smokers" that devastate our winter air?
Moreover, people aren't just putting clean timber in their fireplaces, as you can easily detect if you're out there breathing it. Air-quality monitors confirm that painted or varnished wood, plastics, rubber, garbage and products that contain accelerants, dyes and chemical fragrances are commonly burned as well.
In much of the country, winter air is terrible even
without fireplace emissions. Moreover, people aren't just putting clean timber in their fireplaces, as you can easily detect if you're out there breathing it. Air-quality monitors confirm that painted or varnished wood, plastics, rubber, garbage and products that contain accelerants, dyes and chemical fragrances are commonly burned as well.
 |
| This is what today's weather guys refer to as "crystal clear blue skies." |
The EPA maintains that the use of wood for residential heating contributes up to 50 percent of the deadliest particulate organic air pollutants during the winter, which are highly carcinogenic at relatively low levels, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. (In areas where wood is the principal heating fuel, as much as 80 percent of this category of pollutants is produced in home fireplaces, the Olympic Clean Air Agency in Washington State reports.)
I noticed that as soon as nighttime lows hit 50 degrees a few weeks ago, the fireplaces went into high gear. People can hardly wait.
I had just spent a summer in which I repeatedly had to turn the swamp
cooler off (even though my bedroom was over 80 degrees) because our home
was being filled with smoke from barbeque grills. How I love lying
there inhaling cremated animals.
Now it's the fireplaces.
This is all very tiresome. It's hard to keep the rage from bursting forth in some destructive way.
This is all very tiresome. It's hard to keep the rage from bursting forth in some destructive way.
 |
| It's a good thing that I don't own a rocket launcher or leather hotpants. When I'm being poisoned, I get very cranky. |
It has been years since I've been able to sleep with the window open. I
love the cold air flowing over my face, and I had been doing it since
childhood. But now, my neighborhood is filled with the intense smell of
smoke every night -- all night -- and for much of the day.
When I go jogging at 5 a.m., the smoke is everywhere. Just as the
caustic vapors from one fireplace begin to dissipate, I get hit with
someone else's suffocating emissions (along with all the cars and trucks
that are being "warmed up" along the street).
It doesn't matter what the official air quality designation is.
According to the EPA, if you can smell smoke -- whether it's wildfire
smoke from miles away or from your clueless neighbors down the street --
THE AIR IS UNHEALTHY.
"Mammalian lungs don't have defenses against small particles," points out Joel Schwartz of the EPA and Harvard School of Public Health. "Particulate pollution is the most important contaminant in our air, and we're getting a lot of it from people's fireplaces. We know that when particle levels go up, people die."
"Mammalian lungs don't have defenses against small particles," points out Joel Schwartz of the EPA and Harvard School of Public Health. "Particulate pollution is the most important contaminant in our air, and we're getting a lot of it from people's fireplaces. We know that when particle levels go up, people die."
 |
| I hope you're having the time of your life, because you're killing the rest of us. |
Why should our fellow citizens have the right to infringe on us in this way?
FAREWELL TO SPARKLY, SNOWY JOY
FAREWELL TO SPARKLY, SNOWY JOY
I used to love to go outside on a cold, winter night when the snowfall
had just ended and the sky had cleared. Shoveling the sidewalk was a
joy, because the scene was incredibly beautiful. It was so quiet. The
air was so clean. The sky was midnight blue with lots of stars, and the
snow sparkled like a Christmas card.
It was virtually a religious experience being out there. My neighbors and I exclaimed at the exhilaration of experiencing this breathtaking moment.
It was virtually a religious experience being out there. My neighbors and I exclaimed at the exhilaration of experiencing this breathtaking moment.
That all changed several years ago, when the neighborhood became
chronically filled with choking smoke. There were the fireplaces, of
course. And then the anesthesiologist next door, a "clean-air advocate"
who drove a red SUV, installed a fire pit in her backyard so she could
be comfortable outside, even in the winter.
Another neighbor had an even more disgusting device:
Known as an outdoor wood boiler, it's a shed where a wood
fire heats
water, using no pollution filter. Pipes carry the water into the home
for heat and hot water. The assault of this acrid smoke, which was
shockingly dense even blocks away, made me feel that I was trapped
inside my house. Enjoying nature was no longer an option for me.
 |
| A fire pit can be delightful, if you have no consideration for your neighbors. |
Tens of thousands of these boilers have been sold nationally since 1999, according to the New
York Attorney General's Office.
The
smoke can be so thick that those
living nearby are encouraged to seal up their homes even more tightly,
to cement their chimneys closed and to avoid outdoor activity.
THEIR TOXINS INVADE OUR HOMES
 |
| Outdoor wood boilers, like the one my neighbors have, produce massive amounts of smoke, but it creates such a comfortable home for them, we're supposed not to mind. |
THEIR TOXINS INVADE OUR HOMES
But now I have learned that I can't take refuge from all this filthy air even in my own home.
"The largest single source of fine particles entering our homes in many American cities is our neighbor's fireplace or wood stove," says Dr. Wayne Ott of Stanford University.
"The largest single source of fine particles entering our homes in many American cities is our neighbor's fireplace or wood stove," says Dr. Wayne Ott of Stanford University.
A study at the University of Washington in Seattle showed that 50-70
percent of the outdoor levels of wood smoke was entering homes that were
not burning wood. An EPA study in Boise reached similar results.
So thanks to a very small minority of our neighbors who love that
comforting homeyness that a fire provides, both our indoor air and our
outdoor air are hugely impacted.
The air quality here had become
so absurd that we had planned to move to Bellingham, WA., when family
circumstances permitted. Several years ago, it was rated as having the
cleanest air in the country. Since then, I have noticed a dramatic
deterioration, as reported by the EPA, and I corresponded with
Bellingham's air-quality director to find out why.
 |
| Salt Lake City's "quality of life" is its biggest selling point. Pathetic! |
He told me that the culprit was wood burning. When the price of heating
oil and natural gas went up, he said, a large percentage of the
population began to rely on fireplace heat. Even when the costs went
back down, he said, fireplace use remained high.
KINDLING DISCONTENT
"It's fair to say that it's ruined our city," he said. He admitted to me that he was moving to Colorado Springs, because he has two children who suffer from asthma. "I really feel that it's a life-or-death issue for my family," he added.
About six tons of fine particulate soot is emitted from wood burning every day in the Los Angeles area, according to the Los Angeles Times. New regulations restricting fireplace use on red air-quality days will reduce that by an average of only one ton a day.
Field trials conducted by the Combustion and Carbonization Research Laboratory (CCRL) of fireplaces in Canadian homes have shown that on cold winter days, use of conventional masonry fireplaces results in an increase in fossil-fuel consumption for heating. The fireplaces actually had a negative energy efficiency during the tests
REGULATIONS ARE BASICALLY A 'GREEN LIGHT'
State and municipal governments across the country are addressing this issue, if at all, in a very timid and half-assed way.
The few that have dared to propose a complete ban on woodburning have met with the same outrage as those which have sought to ban handguns. A highly vocal, mobilized minority screams that having a fire is a "God-given right," and they have prevailed time after time.
"This is a personal
pleasure," a homebuilder told the Los Angeles Times. "It's one of the few things they can enjoy -- besides a
television, I guess -- that makes it a home."
Come on, people -- let's update our pleasures a bit. We stopped being cavemen and prairie pioneers quite awhile ago.
Many municipalities are requiring that new homes be equipped with gas fireplaces or pellet-burning wood stoves while continuing to permit existing units to pour forth, unregulated, with their choking excrement.
A number of state and municipal governments -- particularly those that experience one inversion after another during the winter -- have adopted a lightheartedly named "spare the air" program.
These outrageously timid protocols permit wood burning until the pollution levels become unhealthy. At that point, residents are urged or ordered not to burn.
This is such a flaccid, stupid, gutless approach that it wouldn't bother me if they scrapped it altogether.
Long after the air is so filthy that you can see, taste and smell it, our meteorologists cheerfully report that, "It's fine to fire up the old fireplace tonight. But judging from how strong the inversion is, tomorrow night might be a different story."
Only when the air becomes virtually lethal do they reluctantly ask us to "refrain from burning tonight." I wish somebody would have the guts to draft and enforce a policy that actually values public health more than the festive exhilaration of a "roaring fire."
If the air gets scoured out by some beautiful, thrashing blizzard, we do briefly have clean air -- but people are already filling it up with pollution again. You can check your state's website and watch the numbers shoot right back up, hour by hour.
It's asinine to wait until the air gets oppressively bad -- which we know it will -- before prohibiting the burning of wood.
It should be illegal, period.
This is "Trial by Fire" by artist Lorenze Sperlonga:
LET'S JUST DOUSE THEM
Instead of throwing gasoline on the burning issue of air quality, let's throw water on all those fires. They have become a pleasure that we can no longer afford, as Michelle LaLonde of Montreal wrote in her 2009 book, "Falling Out of Love with Fireplaces."
"Care to Make a Difference," with 17 million members worldwide, lobbied leaders in the U.S. and Europe and the International Panel on Climate Change for a total ban on woodburning except in emergency situations. They received little support, despite their documentation that such a ban could have an immediate, major impact on global pollution.
Surely each of us can find many forms of enjoyment that don't hurt other people. And with seven billion people now inhabiting the same sphere, we're going to have to become ever more cognizant of our obligations to our fellow beings. We have already evolved in many ways to accommodate our changing world and our imperiled environment. Giving up your fireplace is a gesture of solidarity with the push to keep our planet and our human race on a harmonious and viable path.
KINDLING DISCONTENT
"It's fair to say that it's ruined our city," he said. He admitted to me that he was moving to Colorado Springs, because he has two children who suffer from asthma. "I really feel that it's a life-or-death issue for my family," he added.
About six tons of fine particulate soot is emitted from wood burning every day in the Los Angeles area, according to the Los Angeles Times. New regulations restricting fireplace use on red air-quality days will reduce that by an average of only one ton a day.
The
inhalable particle pollution from one woodstove is equivalent to the
particle pollution emitted by 3,000 gas furnaces producing the same
amount of heat per unit, data from the California Air Resources Board
indicate.
"In most homes, conventional wood-burning fireplaces are
between -10 percent and +10 percent efficient. They supply little if any heat to the house,
particularly with cold outside temperatures," a recent article reports. |
| Adorable but highly irresponsible. Just use it for decoration. |
For those people who truly can't afford to use a furnace, I say let's just pay their bills for them.
All that pollution aside, conventional fireplaces are extremely inefficient, sometimes even having negative energy efficiency, according to Home Energy Magazine.
All that pollution aside, conventional fireplaces are extremely inefficient, sometimes even having negative energy efficiency, according to Home Energy Magazine.
Field trials conducted by the Combustion and Carbonization Research Laboratory (CCRL) of fireplaces in Canadian homes have shown that on cold winter days, use of conventional masonry fireplaces results in an increase in fossil-fuel consumption for heating. The fireplaces actually had a negative energy efficiency during the tests
REGULATIONS ARE BASICALLY A 'GREEN LIGHT'
State and municipal governments across the country are addressing this issue, if at all, in a very timid and half-assed way.
The few that have dared to propose a complete ban on woodburning have met with the same outrage as those which have sought to ban handguns. A highly vocal, mobilized minority screams that having a fire is a "God-given right," and they have prevailed time after time.
 |
| "Oh, by the way Adam, have a fire whenever you feel like it. I can always create another Earth." |
Come on, people -- let's update our pleasures a bit. We stopped being cavemen and prairie pioneers quite awhile ago.
Many municipalities are requiring that new homes be equipped with gas fireplaces or pellet-burning wood stoves while continuing to permit existing units to pour forth, unregulated, with their choking excrement.
A number of state and municipal governments -- particularly those that experience one inversion after another during the winter -- have adopted a lightheartedly named "spare the air" program.
These outrageously timid protocols permit wood burning until the pollution levels become unhealthy. At that point, residents are urged or ordered not to burn.
This is such a flaccid, stupid, gutless approach that it wouldn't bother me if they scrapped it altogether.
Long after the air is so filthy that you can see, taste and smell it, our meteorologists cheerfully report that, "It's fine to fire up the old fireplace tonight. But judging from how strong the inversion is, tomorrow night might be a different story."
Only when the air becomes virtually lethal do they reluctantly ask us to "refrain from burning tonight." I wish somebody would have the guts to draft and enforce a policy that actually values public health more than the festive exhilaration of a "roaring fire."
If the air gets scoured out by some beautiful, thrashing blizzard, we do briefly have clean air -- but people are already filling it up with pollution again. You can check your state's website and watch the numbers shoot right back up, hour by hour.
It's asinine to wait until the air gets oppressively bad -- which we know it will -- before prohibiting the burning of wood.
It should be illegal, period.
This is "Trial by Fire" by artist Lorenze Sperlonga:
 |
| I'm perfectly willing to use sex (or whatever it takes) to sell a ban on woodburning. |
Instead of throwing gasoline on the burning issue of air quality, let's throw water on all those fires. They have become a pleasure that we can no longer afford, as Michelle LaLonde of Montreal wrote in her 2009 book, "Falling Out of Love with Fireplaces."
"Care to Make a Difference," with 17 million members worldwide, lobbied leaders in the U.S. and Europe and the International Panel on Climate Change for a total ban on woodburning except in emergency situations. They received little support, despite their documentation that such a ban could have an immediate, major impact on global pollution.
Surely each of us can find many forms of enjoyment that don't hurt other people. And with seven billion people now inhabiting the same sphere, we're going to have to become ever more cognizant of our obligations to our fellow beings. We have already evolved in many ways to accommodate our changing world and our imperiled environment. Giving up your fireplace is a gesture of solidarity with the push to keep our planet and our human race on a harmonious and viable path.
An increase in the percentage of urban populations in Europe being
exposed to levels of particulate matter from 2010 to 2011 suggested some
backsliding, the report said. The development was attributed to dry spells in
the period, which slow the dispersal of particulates. But it also could reveal
a growing reliance on wood burning for home heating in some countries during
the financial crisis, the agency said.
