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Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Environment - "Burning Issue: As wood stoves gain popularity, air-quality concerns rise"
The ILB has had many entries about outdoor, wood fired furnaces or boilers. Yesterday the WSJ had a long article by Suzanne Barlyn on the environmental hazards of indoor wood stoves. Some quotes:
The soaring prices of heating oil and natural gas are prompting many Americans to warm their houses with a less expensive fuel -- wood. * * *But increased reliance on wood stoves is worrying many environmental regulators and activists, who say the practice emits harmful pollutants. Around the country, local environmental regulators are limiting the use of stoves when pollution is especially bad, and in some cases they're offering incentives to get people to buy the cleanest models possible.
"People conceive of burning wood as being natural. Tobacco is natural, too -- until it burns," says Julie Mellum, president of Take Back the Air, an organization concerned with neighborhood air pollution, and Midwest director of Clean Air Revival, a group concerned with the medical hazards of wood-smoke exposure. "When many people are burning wood, the effect is all the more hazardous." * * *
In 1988, an Environmental Protection Agency regulation required new stoves to keep particulate emissions below certain levels. Some states and municipalities require that all stoves sold and installed carry an "EPA certified" designation.
But some clean-air advocates say the EPA's certification standards aren't stringent enough to curb runaway pollution. Even wood stoves that are certified as "clean burning" by the EPA still emit 107 times more fine particulates than an oil-fired furnace.
Earlier this year, the Western States Air Resources Council in Seattle and Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management in Boston, both of which are groups of air-quality agencies, urged the EPA to tighten its certification standards with stricter particulate requirements. The EPA says it's reviewing the information it needs to revise the standards.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 16, 2008 01:13 PM
Posted to Environment