Bay Area Meeting on Wood Smoke Pollution

The Board of Directors of the San Francisco Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) is meeting this Wednesday, April 6, at 9:45 a.m. At this meeting, there will be a recap of this past winter’s Spare the Air program, which represents the bulk of BAAQMD’s efforts concerning wood smoke enforcement and education.

This is the third year that the program has been in effect. Once again the Board will hear an upbeat report from the Outreach Department about the number of media stories and ads placed reminding people to “check before you burn.” The Enforcement Division will present its facts and figures about the number of wood smoke complaints received and the resulting patrols. The report will most likely point to the fact that this past winter the Bay Area exceeded the National Ambient Air Quality standard for particulate matter only once as proof that the BAAQMD’s efforts to reduce wood smoke pollution are working.

Families for Clean Air will be at the Board meeting to rebut the rosy picture painted by Outreach and Enforcement and tell the story of what’s happening in neighborhoods heavily impacted by wood smoke. In addition to anecdotal evidence from people living in a toxic clouds of smoke from their neighbors’ chimneys, FCA has conducted its own pilot study, conducted by the same consultant who conducts air quality monitoring studies for BAAQMD. FCA’s study shows that, not just once, but several times throughout the winter, the air quality in one wood smoke-impacted neighborhood exceeded the National Ambient Air Quality standard for particulate matter. This standard is what BAAQMD uses when it calls a winter Spare the Air alert, which bans wood burning for 24 hours.

The FCA study shows that the BAAQMD’s region-wide approach to wood smoke regulation is not reaching the communities that need it most. We will repeat the message to the Board on Wednesday: It is time to focus on a neighborhood-level approach to wood smoke pollution. There need to be air quality monitors and wood smoke abatement programs in wood smoke-impacted neighborhoods, just as there are air quality monitors in neighborhoods impacted by diesel pollution and a myriad of programs to reduce diesel pollution. It’s time to take the issue of wood smoke pollution off the back burner.

If your neighborhood has a wood smoke problem, give FCA a call or email us so that we can relay that information to the BAAQMD board at the meeting on Wednesday. Or come to the meeting at 939 Ellis Street in San Francisco. We’ll report back on the results.

Wood Smoke: An ‘Ancient and Traditional’ Cause of COPD

March, 2011. A recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle entitled, “Wood smoke harmful to health and DNA, study finds,” garnered many comments from readers. Many of the comments had a similar theme.

One reader wrote, “Note to All: Our species has been burning wood for warmth, for food preparation, and for general social evolution, for tens of thousands of years.”

Another anonymous commenter said, “Hmmm, lets see man has had FIRE for oh about 100,000 years so tell me again how many people in the study group? And if this is a TRUE STUDY why aren’t we all EXTINCT???”

Finally, there was this statement, “Needless to say, wood fires have been used by humans for thousands of years with no ill effects.”

Well, actually no–while humans have indeed been burning wood for heat and cooking for thousands of years, this practice has also been harming people’s health for thousands of years and continues to do so today.

Signs of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), an inflammatory disease state associated with breathing difficulty and sputum, have been found in Egyptian mummies and in a 1,600-year-old Alaskan mummy. Notes one researcher, “COPD secondary to exposure to open wood fires while cooking is still an important cause of COPD in many countries, and probably has been a cause of COPD ever since fire was introduced for cooking.”

In the Western world, we tend to romanticize ancient practices, including burning wood. However, there is nothing romantic about hacking up mucus, wheezing, and being out of breath. People in developing countries in Asia, South America, and Africa who rely on burning even today continue to develop COPD at alarming rates.

Because we are dedicated to education about the harmful effects of wood smoke, we at Families for Clean Air find such comments from readers to be disheartening.

Luckily, the tide seems to be turning, and there were also comments in response to this article that gave us hope: “Have the people that think wood smoke is healthy even read the article?” asks one commenter. (This question also occurred to us, and the answer is likely, “No.”) And another reader could have been speaking for us, writing, “Newsflash–smoke of any kind is harmful.”

Fireplaces Without the Pollution

In eco-conscious Northern California “wood-burning fireplaces are becoming obsolete.” So proclaimed the San Francisco Chronicle Homes section in a recent cover story on contemporary and cleaner alternatives to wood burning stoves and fireplaces.

These new “eco fireplaces” use clean-burning bioethanol fuel, and, according to one manufacturer, produce no ash, no soot and no smoke. The most cutting edge designs are free-standing with no chimney, pipes, vents, or even walls. There are also inserts that install easily into an existing firebox. All the heat generated by the fire stays in the room, and the flames can be enhanced with “fire objects” such as rocks and brightly colored glass cubes.

For those looking for an art piece as well as a source of heat, there are beautiful and elegant designs from a variety of manufacturers.

We heartily endorse this hot new trend in interior design. These new fireplaces produce the warmth and glow of a traditional fireplace without the negative health and environmental impacts from wood smoke.

Wood Smoke Pollution: Rights and Wrong

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.”

Most people interpret this quote to mean that no one has a right to do something that will directly hurt someone else: You can swing your fist, but you can’t make contact with someone’s face. After all, no one wants to get punched in the nose.

Here at Families for Clean Air, we think this concept applies to wood smoke pollution as well. All too often, articles about curtailing wood smoke pollution, especially those about the negative impact of fireplace or wood stove use, are greeted with outraged comments extolling the “right to burn” (ignoring the fact that no one has the “right” to burn). Other comments claim that people concerned about wood smoke should mind their own business.

In response to a recent New York Times article about the harmful effects of wood smoke, Brown University Philosophy Professor Felicia Nimue Ackerman opined, “I think that monitoring your friends and neighbors for environmental purity should be the next social crime.”

We’d like to ask Dr. Ackerman a question: When did protecting one’s health and fighting for clean air become a “social crime”? When your neighbor is doing something that harms you and your family, it becomes your business, too. It’s as simple as that.

Scores of studies document the hazards of wood smoke, while others show that wood smoke pollution can enter neighboring houses, even when the windows and doors are shut. This is not about “environmental purity” (although wood smoke is very polluting), it is about the right to breathe the cleanest air possible.

The bottom line? No one has the “right” to burn when their proximity to other houses or buildings means that others will be unwillingly exposed to the toxins they produce when they burn wood.

In other words: Your right to burn wood ends where your neighbor’s nose begins.