Many Americans have grown up with the idea that wood fires of all kinds – bonfires, fires in chimneys, fires for heat and recreation – are a part of celebrating the colder months. The winter holidays, starting with the Winter Solstice on Dec. 21, are replete with symbols of fire and actual fire.
But it turns out that breathing in wood smoke is not good for your heath. Environment and Human Health is a small research and policy nonprofit in Connecticut that has produced reports on a raft of public health concerns such as pesticides, flame retardants and diesel bus exhaust.
After people from all over the country contacted them, desperate for help with the toxic problem of wood smoke they had no control over, the group took up the issue of wood smoke produced in both outdoor wood furnaces and the proliferating number of recreational sources like fire pits and chimineas. Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Nancy Alderman, founder and president of EHHI, about the health effects of wood smoke and a new regulation recently adopted by Connecticut’s Department of Public Health that should help some residents looking for relief from the unhealthy effects of wood smoke exposure.
NANCY ALDERMAN: Wood smoke has been a problem getting into people’s property and homes; people have been contacting EHHI for well over a decade with serious issues related to neighbors’ woodburning and the wood smoke getting into their homes and making people really very sick. People have to understand, if you breathe it in enough – and we’ve never seen a wood-burning neighbor ever, ever stop their wood-burning unless the state comes down on them — they just don’t voluntarily ever stop. But if you’re breathing wood smoke for a long enough period of time, I hate to say it but the end result can be lung cancer. It is not benign. Wood smoke has many of the same components as cigarette smoke. But on the road to lung cancer is sinusitis, asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia. The end result can be lung cancer. So if people can’t resolve the problem of wood smoke in their homes and the state can’t or won’t do anything, they have to move. There really is no choice. You can put in air purifiers; they will do a little bit of good, but they will not really protect you.
What we found is the state will enforce recreational wood-burning harms, but when it comes to heating, I’ve never yet seen the state of Connecticut stop wood-burning for heat, and that is bad news. I’ve never seen them shut down an outdoor wood furnace or an indoor wood stove. People claim it’s their heating, and they can’t afford other heating and the state then leaves them alone.
MELINDA TUHUS: Do you have any idea of how many outdoor wood furnaces there are in Connecticut?
NANCY ALDERMAN: Well, first of all, they’re not in the cities. Connecticut has a 200-foot setback, so if you’re in suburbia or a city, you don’t have them. It’s really in the rural areas that you have them. But the problem is that even if nobody’s around the house that has one, that wood smoke does travel for half a mile, and we did do testing in those homes that were fairly far away, and they still had high levels of wood smoke in their homes. So outdoor wood furnaces are very, very serious, and it’s why a number of towns in Connecticut have already banned them.
MELINDA TUHUS: Nancy Alderman, wood smoke is one of my very favorite smells, maybe because I have such happy memories connected with it.
NANCY ALDERMAN: You know, especially in New England, wood-burning is part of what everybody grew up with; they never before heard before that it was harmful, and they don’t understand why people are complaining and why they’re getting sick. What is remarkable now, I think it’s terrific – and I don’t know any other state that is doing it – and that is that the State Department of Health is saying to the local health departments – all of them – that if somebody in your district is being harmed by a neighbor’s wood smoke and it is getting into their property and their homes, that then the local health departments should then stop the person from burning.
What has also happened in the past five or six years is that recreational wood-burning has skyrocketed. That means it’s not just heating your house with an indoor wood stove or an outdoor wood furnace, which we came in contact with in the beginning of our work. But now, so many people have fire pits, chimineas, smokers, that the issue is far greater than it ever was before. It’s now really a big issue. So, it is our local health departments that are empowered to stop wood-burning. It’s not the state health department, although they sent the directive to the local health departments telling them that if people are harmed by neighbors’ wood smoke, then they really need to stop the wood burning to protect people’s health.
I don’t know another state that’s doing that. We get complaints from many people in many different states, and their local health departments are not doing much.
For more information on Environment and Human Health, visit ehhi.org.
