An article regarding the health risks of using wood burning stoves.
Yep. Stating the bleeding obvious. Comes up every few years. In this case, the article (By DR GARY FULLER, LEADING POLLUTION SCIENTIST, FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY) is little more than an advertisement for:
The Invisible Killer: The Rising Global Threat Of Air Pollution – And How We Can Fight Back, by Gary Fuller, published by Melville House UK on November 28, priced £12.99. Offer price £10.39 (20 per cent discount) until December 3. Pre-order at The Mail Bookshop or call 0844 571 0640; p&p is free on orders over £15. Spend £30 on books and get free premium delivery.
5 Likes
I blame the people with too much wood.
If you read the article, even the French Ecology Minister, Ségolène Royal, said you couldn’t ban this kind of heating because you couldn’t have a romantic evening without wood! Seems fairly obvious to me … unless I’m reading it wrong.
4 Likes
I’m with the French. Red wine and a cosy winters night in. What more could you ask for?
I fire up the old Columbian cooker around 3pm in the arvo in winter. It gently burbles away heating the old low pressure hot water tank. Encouraged I kick the circulating pump in. Subtle heating through the radiators in the living area, without the zero humidity of a reverse cycle aircon.
The fluffy white smoke drifts into the nearby forest of exotic pines so they can extract the CO2 to help them grow and the ash from the iron bark goes to the garden the next day to help grow the next tree for the fire!
Nature is wonderful.
For concerned readers, no coal was harmed in the making of this warmth. Although the top loading Colombian is rated for Welsh best nuggets and coke if you have some to hand. 
5 Likes
Whatever gets you fired up.
6 Likes
Alisa Perks loves living in the regional New South Wales town of Armidale, but she has been forced to lock herself inside every winter for the past 16 years.
She has asthma and, throughout the cooler months, smoke from woodfired heaters blankets the region.
About two in five homes in Armidale use the heaters and they contribute to the majority of the city’s air pollution in winter.
“We need to keep every door and window closed or the smoke gets in.”
Ms Perks is one of the 2.7 million Australians with asthma. About one-quarter can have potentially deadly asthma attacks triggered by smoke.
Now, a study published in the Medical Journal of Australia on Monday suggests this type of smoke is killing at least 14 of Armidale’s residents prematurely each year.
“[The study] probably means that the number of deaths from wood smoke has been underestimated,” Dr Robinson said.
“It’s probably about 200 deaths a year in the greater Sydney metropolitan area — that’s Sydney, Newcastle, Wollongong and the surrounding areas.”
