Air District proposes rules on wood smoke - enjoy the glow without the smoke

What sight is more comforting on a cold winter evening than a roaring fireplace stacked with logs?

According to recent scientific studies, we should be anything but comforted: wood smoke is hazardous to our health. We can still enjoy the fire, but we need to use cleaner alternatives.

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District has proposed a regulation to control wood-smoke pollution. The health of our community depends on it.

The hazard

The problem with burning wood is that it creates significant amounts of fine-particle pollution. The more scientists have learned about these tiny particles of soot, the more alarmed they have become.

Numerous studies link particle pollution with a host of health problems including asthma attacks, diminished lung function, emphysema, and other respiratory ailments. More recently, particle pollution has been associated with heart attacks, stroke, cancer, and premature death. Particle pollution affects everyone, but is particularly dangerous for children - whose lungs are still developing.

In the Bay Area residential wood-burning is the single largest source of winter particle pollution, contributing more than automobiles, diesel vehicles, or industry. So hazardous are these particles that in September 2006 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cut by half the allowable levels in the air. Further, wood smoke contains toxic and carcinogenic substances including benzene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and dioxin - one of the most toxic substances on earth. According to the Air District, wood smoke is the largest stationary source of dioxin in the Bay Area.

It may seem hard to believe that something so familiar could actually be harmful. But just watch a movie from the 1940s, and you'll realize that cigarette-smoking also was once considered harmless, and was even more ubiquitous than wood burning is today. Wood smoke and tobacco smoke contain many of the same harmful particles, resulting from the combustion process.

Wood smoke is both a regional and a local problem. Every winter the American Lung Association of California receives phone calls from distraught residents suffering from health problems caused by clouds of smoke from their neighbors' wood-burning. Often they have young children with asthma who are literally unable to breathe when they go outside.

Alternatives

Fortunately there are easily available solutions to help you enjoy the fire without the smoke. Gas fireplaces now so convincingly imitate their log-burning brethren that it is difficult to tell them apart, and gas is far more convenient and cleaner-burning. Electric models offer amazing realism. Pellet stoves deliver high overall efficiency, and burn relatively cleanly. With improved woodstove combustion technologies, some newer stoves have certified emissions as low as pellet stoves. To make the transition to cleaner-burning alternatives easier, the Air District will set aside $500,000 for rebates to help people change out polluting devices.

The proposed regulation is a common-sense solution to a public-health threat. It would apply to all nine Bay Area counties and would:

• curtail operation of any wood-burning device when air-quality levels are projected to reach unhealthy levels;
• restrict visible emission from wood-burning (to no longer than six minutes for start-up, and no more than 20 minutes over any four-hour period);
• require cleaner-burning technology and public-awareness information when wood-burning devices are sold, transferred, or installed;
• prohibit the burning of garbage and other inappropriate materials;
• require that only dry, seasoned wood be sold, and that wood have a label listing moisture content;
• allow exemptions for residences that use wood as sole source of heat and have no natural-gas availability.

WhatYouCanDo

Write to your representatives on the Board of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Urge them to adopt the wood-smoke regulation in its most health-protective form.

Marin County

Supervisor Hal Brown
(415)499-7331
fax: (415)499-3645
hbrown -at- co.marin.ca.us

San Francisco

Supervisor Chris Daly
(415)554-7970
fax: (415)554-7974
chris.daly -at- sfgov.org

Supervisor Jake McGoldrick
(415)554-7410
fax: (415)554-7415
Jake.McGoldrick -at- sfgov.org

Mayor Gavin Newsom
(415)554-6141
fax: (415)554-6160
gavin.newsom -at- sfgov.org

Contra Costa County

Danville Mayor Michael Shimansky
(925)831-0130
fax: (925)838-4344
mshimansky -at- ci.danville.ca.us

Supervisor Gayle Uilkema
(925)335-1046
fax: (925)335-1076
gayle -at- bos.cccounty.us

Supervisor John Goia
(510)374-3231
fax: (510)374-3429
dist1 -at- bos.co.contra-costa.ca.us

Alameda County

Supervisor Nate Miley
(510)272-6694
fax: (510)670-5717
BOSdist4 -at- acgov.org

Dublin Mayor Janet Lockhart
(925)833-6663
fax: (925)833-6651
janet.lockhart -at- ci.dublin.ca.us

Supervisor Scott Haggerty
(510)272-6691
fax: (510)208-3910
district1 -at- acgov.org

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates
(510)981-7100
fax: (510)981-7199
mayor -at- ci.berkeley.ca.us

You can also write to any of them at:

c/o BAAQMD
939 Ellis St.
San Francisco, CA 94109.
For more information visit www.californialung.org

Jenny Bard, assistant director of advocacy and communications, American Lung Association of California