Guide for New Visitors  

The Burning Issues web site contains a great deal of information. This page lists some of the highlights of the site. We suggest that you peruse this information first. The top pages are:

 

• New Items
  • May 22, 2009. Judge prohibits outdoor wood boiler in Jackson, MI
  • March 6, 2009 Testimony before Connecticut lawmakers on HR6616 An Act Establishing Wood Smoke as a Public Nuisance. It includes a fine summary of Health Effects of Wood Smoke by a Public Health Toxicologist.
• Science
  • Preface by Dr. Wayne Ott. A very short overview.
  • Twelve Year Study of Particulate Pollution in a residential neighborhood of Redwood City, CA showing that there has been no improvement in a dozen years. Stove switchout programs have a failure
  • World Health Organization: 2 million premature deaths every year due to air pollution. They urge cleaning up the air. AIDS kills over 2 million people a year. (Economist, 2/18/08). Why do we think that AIDS is a catastrophe but air pollution isn't.
  • Wood smoke particle. A microphotograph of an actual wood smoke particle removed from a patients lung and depictions of the size of such particles.
  • Temperature inversions play an important role in trapping smoke on clear cold evenings.
  • EPA Report showing that certified wood stoves deteriorate over time.
  • Carnegie-Mellon study looking for effects of a coal-fired power plant found larger contribution of wood smoke than that of the coal-fired power plant and comparable to that of the smelter in down town Pittsburgh.
  • Wood Smoke is an important source of Dioxins and PCBs.
  • Neighborhood monitoring done by Burning Issues.
  • GASP presentation entitled "Effects of AIr Pollution on Cardiovascular Disease"
  • New Estimates of Premature Deaths (830 KB) from long term exposure to PM_2.5. See SF Chronically article discussing this report;
  • In Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley dirty air kills more than car crashes. "It may be tempting to think California can't afford to clean up, but in fact dirty air is like a $28 billion lead balloon on our economy," said. Jane Hall, lead author of the study at Cal State Fullerton.
  • We should emphasize Climate Neutral rather than Carbon Neutral which covers only part of the wood burning problem.
• Educational Materials
  • Brochures and Fact Sheets
    • 2007 Brochure This is a general wood smoke brochure. It explains the wood smoke problem and other air toxins and talks about what you can do about it.
    • Cancer Brochure This brochure describes the ways that wood smoke is particularly dangerous for cancer patients and steps that can lessen their exposure.
    • 2003 WOOD SMOKE Brochure Black & White (183KB PDF) Bibliographic References for 2003 WOOD SMOKE Brochure (116KB PDF)
    • Medical effects fact sheet
    • OWB Fact Sheet (102KB PDF)
    • OWB Brochure, September 2008 (228KB PDF)
  • Slide Show Provides a quick introduction.
• Medical Effects
  • Excellent survey slide-show of health effects (2 MB) by Dr. Harriet Ammann. Two of the slides were generated by Burning Issues.
  • Wood Smoke Emissions Effects on Host Pulmonary Immune Defense, Judith T. Zelikoff, Ph.D. In a laboratory study at New York University, animals exposed to wood smoke immediately had a 25% decrease in the lungs' ability to clear bacteria, and after just 1.5 to 2.5 hours, had decreases of 23% to 61% in lung function.
  • 2007 New England Journal of Medicine article showing that women are more sensitive than men to the effects of wood smoke.
  • How Particulate Matter causes coagulation leading to arterial thrombosis (2007).
  • Wood smoke exposure can be detected with a urine test.
  • Wood smoke from heating and cooking raises lung cancer risk..
• Legal
  • March 6, 2009 Testimony before Connecticut lawmakers on HR6616 An Act Establishing Wood Smoke as a Public Nuisance. It includes a fine summary of Health Effects of Wood Smoke by a Public Health Toxicologist.
  • 1992 judgment by Oregon Court of Appeals found that smoke intrusion is trespass. This may be an important precedent for judicial protection from particular wood burners.
  • Judgments against wood burners. There has been a lot of recent actions where wood burners have lost.
• Scientific Papers
  • John A. Cooper's 1980 paper on residential wood burning was the first paper on the subject that we have seen and it seems to have said it all. Scanned full text of Cooper's paper.
• Climate Change
  • May people believe that at worst burning wood is "carbon neutral". Particles Cause Climate Change shows that belief to be incorrect.
  • Biofuels Deemed a Greenhouse Threat and also increase the total Particulate Pollution.
• Economics
  • 150 Billion Dollar Problem Using arguments similar to Jared Diamond in "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed",  New York: Viking, 2005.
  • An Engineer's Perspective on Heating with Solid Fuels.
  • Many wood burners use the high cost of energy to justify wood burning. These people should see and understand Energy Initiative by Al Gore.

Keep in mind and use the Search Page which provides a Goggle search of all the pages on the Burning Issues web site.

Site Map

Major outline of the web site structure.

   Additional Information
   Economics
   Education
      Slide Show
   Latest News
      Archives
   Legal
   Library
   Medical Effects
      Asthma
      Cancer
      Childrens Disease
      Dioxin Slide Show
      Heart Lung
      Immune Disease
      Mortality Morbidity
   Science
      Abstracts

We welcome your suggestions for improving this page. Contact us at: