Woodsmoke...

[AE-NMidlands]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... od-burners (pollutionwatch-the-solvable-problem-of-home-wood-burners) ends by saying

Prof Fay Johnston at the University of Tasmania, who was involved in the Armidale and Launceston studies, said: “Wood heaters really punch above their weight when it comes to polluting the atmosphere. Any scheme that replaces wood heaters with less polluting forms of heating will pay for itself within a year and provide ongoing savings from the avoided additional disease and death associated with woodsmoke.”

On the eve of Cop26, research from Chatham House has provided more evidence that the UK’s subsidised large-scale burning of wood for energy, such as wood chips burned at Drax power station, results in more carbon dioxide in our air, not less, for decades to come. If the government and homeowners had spent the past 10 years investing in insulation and non-combustion renewables, instead of wood burning, we would have healthier air in our cities today and less carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.

I knew it!

[Mr Gus]

Lump them all together why don't you. (To wbs haters)

Are these "seasonal" tech killer soundbytes or comparing results with catalytic converters & without for instance?I
Will wait for the Guardian to start screaming imminently & regurgitating with an Alamo stock image.

When will patio heaters, gas & electric, 2 stroke lawnmowers etc be banned

Chimneas anyone?
Council burning policies? (a rarity),

Diesel ban?
Idling engines enforcement (public land)

Can anyone measure the unnecessary pollution levels from frantic idiots idling their engines in gridlock queues for petrol (because it was hassle turning the engine off in long stationary queues)

Please!?

[spread-tee]

Yeah it's all the Guardians fault, who want's clean air anyway, I don't give a fuck if my stove kills people..................

No point in blowing a gasket about other stuff Gus, the science is pretty solid, wood stoves are dirty polluters, sadly.

Desp

[Joeboy]

Yeah it's all the Guardians fault, who want's clean air anyway, I don't give a fuck if my stove kills people..................

Can't remember the last time my woodstove killed someone. I will keep an eye on it from now on. It has been on a strict diet of well seasoned wood and burning well. Nonetheless....

[Bugtownboy]

Happens

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-59004038

[spread-tee]

Yeah it's all the Guardians fault, who want's clean air anyway, I don't give a fuck if my stove kills people..................

Can't remember the last time my woodstove killed someone. I will keep an eye on it from now on. It has been on a strict diet of well seasoned wood and burning well. Nonetheless....

Whether we realise it or not our woodstoves are a major source of particulates according to quite a lot of research, particulates shorten a huge amount of peoples lives, that is not in question. What is in question is what are we going to do about it. It is a sad situation for me personally too as I sit enjoying my woodstove, but maybe it's days are numbered.........

Desp

[Bugtownboy]

But Desp, are the results skewed by poor use of the stove/poor choice of fuel/poor choice of stove ? While I accept there are micro-particulates as a bi-product, I sense there is a bit of a witch hunt to vilify a perceived middle class affectation.

For many down here, it is, still, the only practical alternative to cooking/heating with electric.

Put aside the PM2.5’s etc, locally it removes wood from wood/hedge etc management that would otherwise decompose, releasing the same amount of CO2.

I accept, decaying wood can offer a valuable contribution to the local ecosystem.

Above all else, having a secondary source of heating/cooking/hot water is such a valuable resource - I wouldn’t want to lose.

[spread-tee]

Have a look here BTB,
https://www.epa.gov/burnwise/wood-smoke-and-your-health

https://www.camden.gov.uk/wood-burning-stoves

you are right burning wet wood and dodgy stoves will make thing worse, but I do think it is more than just "trendy bashing"

I don't want to lose it either, we spent a not inconsiderable amount of money buying a boiler stove and designing our whole house around our beloved "dragonstove" as Microdesp named it back in 2009. But the fact is the science doesn't lie particulates contribute to 4000 londoners early deaths, woodstoves are part of that.

Am I guilty? yes, do I want to ditch the stove? no, what do I do??

Desp

[Mr Gus]

Bear in mind I'm inebriated & back from the pub, long chat stemming from chat about 808 samples from a newly moved to the countryside city music geezer forcing drink down my neck..but wasn't the gruniard a big pusher of the car cat converter back in the day? I wonder frequently why they wrote like all stoves are the worst of the machine mart Franklin type (first vaguely efficient ones) & lump all in akin to you are the colour of stove paint = black thus guilty.
How many of their readers understand a modern stove (+ good burning practise) !?

Never any mention of good practise.
Never any mention of catalytic capable & the reduction that is acceptable in power stations powering a sedentary night in front of shi-ite tv but by contrast not good enough for a woodburner, whilst promoting city centric 4x4's & holidays by jet to fricking dubai for some global excess.

At least a wbs will keep you warm & your house liveable, unlike a frickin chimnea, but I don't see year in year out campaigning against those feckers.
It's ok to be anti something, but blinkered & anti ..can go procreate itself

& Differentiate between cheap Chinese wbs leaky inneficiency & proper wbs users, & cat stoves, ..none of this ever features in a piece because it detracts from " the story" yet next week there may well be a piece on yurt holidays (carefully avoiding the wbs heating for tarquin & ginny who travelled to the sticks for the weekend in an ice 4x4 lease, ..diesel,.

My stove fuel is the unthinking gruniard tools outfits of oak / beech furniture "waste" + temporary wildlife habitats repurposed (time spent in rain banging insects out of wood & bark. ..I suppose we could just bury it & charge more for the furniture.

Yeah, we could go back to oil central heating too (Which was "hite" )

Tell me guardian do you want us to heat with wood fired well (& measure t the air I get less theoretical pollution than a trip to ikea) heating one rooms but actually heating the majority of a home or oil boiler heating badl, nearly 20 years ago since we filled the stinking oil tank which failed to heat half as well.
Context forever lacking guardian.

You can always pick good fruit off a tree & make comparisons about the rest of the crop, but you rely on the reader not to understand neither fruit, nor fruit picking (arse & elbow) when writing a story as a"journey-al-ist" kicking up dust, reporting on aforementioned dust (storms) & moving on.

I'm tempted to ask the gruniard if I can place an advert for a wbs & see where their morals lay. Maybe blow hard about a 68.5% efficiency
Yup, I support the paper, but stupid is stupid

Tackle the vastly (more) inefficient open fire? ..nah woodburners fit the agenda.
Kristelnacht but with stoves ..might make them pause momentarily

[Bugtownboy]

Sounds like a good night down the pub, Gus

There does seem to be a witch hunt against WBS each year, while I accept burning stuff is going to produce emissions, the whole science around PM source and measurement is still developing.

I suppose WBS are an easy target as they’re deemed non-essential or a trendy affectation.

If you have the time, this is probably the most definitive paper for the U.K. -

https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/assets/docu ... the_UK.pdf

Lovely bed time reading

Pulled out a few (ok very selective) paragraphs -

At present the measurement of PM2.5 remains a challenge, with current measurements falling just below the data capture requirements of the EU Air Quality Directive. AQEG recommends a focused working group is assembled to address the achievement of Directive requirements using current measurement methods

There is evidence to suggest that domestic and commercial sources make a contribution to concentrations of PM2.5 during the evening period, which may be due to solid fuel combustion and to particles released during cooking. Based on the limited evidence available, primary particles from industrial sources do not appear to make a major contribution to urban background concentrations.

One of the few sources which is typically quantified from a single component is biomass burning, which in the UK would typically refer to wood burning and bonfires, although occasionally woodland and forest fires would also contribute. The carbohydrate compound levoglucosan is typically used as a single marker
of biomass burning as this is by far its major atmospheric source. Consequently, there is little risk of contributions from other sources but there remains the problem of converting the mass of levoglucosan into a mass of wood smoke particles. While many measurements exist of the ratio of wood smoke particles to levoglucosan mass, the ratio is highly variable depending on combustion conditions. Consequently, when using levoglucosan as an atmospheric tracer, there are large uncertainties in the subsequent conversion to a wood smoke mass. Other tracers of wood smoke include fine particle potassium (after correction for a contribution from wind-blown soil and sea salt), but a similar problem remains, namely that the wood smoke to fine potassium mass ratio is highly dependent upon combustion conditions and there is no unique factor for the conversion as it relates to the atmosphere. It is also possible to use an aethalometer to estimate wood smoke mass but the method (Sandradewi et al., 2008) was developed in a Swiss valley where there are only two sources of carbonaceous particles, road traffic and wood smoke. In situations such as the UK where there may well be other sources of carbonaceous particles, the two component model on which the calculation is based is unreliable; as yet there is no agreed way of using the aethalometer to calculate wood smoke mass in the UK. Perhaps the most reliable way of estimating wood smoke mass is from the analysis of radiocarbon (14C). Radiocarbon is associated with contemporary sources of carbon and not with fossil sources. Consequently, if contemporary elemental carbon is found in the atmosphere, it most likely arises from the combustion of biomass. Consequently, it is a fairly reliable tracer of wood smoke but there again remains a question over conversion of the elemental carbon mass to the mass of wood smoke particles, once again this is heavily dependent upon combustion conditions.

Do we target cooking next ? No more Maillard Reaction to produce that perfect steak ? Our worst levels of PM2.5 are when air conditions bring them from continental Europe - will this stop now we’ve left the EU ?

As you allude to, inefficient wood burning is the most polluting - open fires being the worst. The science isn’t there yet to indicate how much is produced using a modern, efficient WBS burning hardwood with a MC around 15%.

I’ll definitely be roasting me chestnuts tonight