Burning Issues

Burning Solid Fuels is False Economy

Dublin Ireland goes to cleaner fuels and saves lives, 10/22/2002

Cost of not reducing PM2.5 in the San Francisco Bay Area $2.1 Billion and 1,098 deaths,
Health cost of wood burning $1.1 Billion

Cost of 1 fire:$40. ( 20 pounds wood)
(The Economic Value of Quantifiable Ozone and PM10 Related Health Effects in the San Francisco Bay Area. 10/94)

Ozone Reduction in the San Francisco Bay Area
Cost to reduce ozone $1 billion Health savings $5.3 million
(The Economic Value of Quantifiable Ozone and PM10 Related Health Effects in the San Francisco Bay Area. 10/94)

Are we as a nation pursuing a false economy regardless of the price? We have spent billions cleaning up autos and factories while the most polluting of available home energy sources, wood combustion has remained untouched. Trees are a sacred cash cow. We all love to gaze into a fire 'and loose ourselves' but at what cost?
We take forest fires seriously. We don't like homes or people being incinerated. Yet the press never mentions the severe health effects of breathing the smoky air that blankets a fire in action. (President Clinton authorized $2.9 billion up from $1.8 billion last year to fight US forest fires this summer 2001. President Bush in August, 2001 committed billions to a ten year plan to prevent forest fires.) Yet as a country the US has not chosen to encourage clean air for its citizens.

For our study area of San Francisco $1 billion is spent each year on regulations to reduce ozone which is worst in the summer. The 1994 Fullerton San Francisco Bay Area Economic Report (Hall, 1995) estimates that $5.3 million in health benefits will result from these smog-reducing controls. The value of successful cleanup of car pollution for this area is attributed with yearly health savings of $604 million.
It estimates that the yearly loss to the Bay Area from PM2.5 pollution is $2.1 billion. The cost of wood burning was $1.1 billion per year. 15% of the population burning wood for home heating and ambience, costs six million people both in health, well being and quality of life but also in real dollars. Each pound of wood burned costs the entire community $2 in increased medical costs and lost work days. That is equivalent to $40 for an average fire burning 20 pounds of wood. "Simply banning or limiting wood fires could potentially save many lives at little or no cost" (Fairley, 1994).


The question that we must face is why the government and our "Air Quality Districts" and Environmental Agencies refuse to clear our air with the most cost effective decisions.

Medical costs continue to increase. Why not decrease pollution to promote better health as the Fullerton study recommends? It is cheaper to be well.

What is our habit of solid fuel combustion costing us? Who is footing the bill? Some hidden costs of wood heat are increased neighborhood pollution levels resulting in suburban corridors of illness, lost wages, lost school time and sudden death. Let's look at the human and dollar cost and the value of raw wood in several ways.

The Added Value of Manufacturing Wood Products
Wood burning is big business but it could be argued that wood is too valuable to burn. In North Carolina, 4th largest wood producer in the US, manufacturing wood products provides 145,000 people jobs with an annual payroll of $3.5 billion. Similar figures were not available on the web for the politically embattled California Timber Industry, which is the largest state wood producer.

North Carolina lists for us what we could do with a cord of wood.

By manufacturing wood products we increase jobs and add value to our natural resources. We increase our productivity as a nation. Wood builds houses, fences, salad bowls, furniture, kitchen cabinets, musical instruments and much more. Value is added to the raw wood. A cord of wood may be just the cost of labor, gasoline, chain saw supplies and hauling (called free wood in the US) or as much as $400. Burn it up and it is gone. It turns into a small amount of heat and a large amount of air pollution that will set up a value lost equation.

1 cord of wood is 8 feet by 4 feet by 4 feet
Value in what it can produce:
30 Boston rockers (chairs) or
12 dining room tables that each seat eight people or
1,200 copies of National Geographic magazine or
61,370 No. 10 envelopes or
460,000 personal checks or
1,000 to 2,000 pounds of paper (depending on the process used) or
89,870 sheets of letterhead bond paper or
942 one-pound books or
4,384,000 commemorative-size postage stamps or
7,500,000 toothpicks

What is Solid Fuel Combustion Costing Us?
"The alleged popularity and benefit of heating with wood or other solid fuels is simply not justified by the expense, detrimental health impacts of "second hand" wood smoke, fire hazards, and poor heating performance of wood stoves. Newspapers & magazines as well as movies & television that promote the use of wood stoves and fireplaces as being romantic and natural do not responsibly present the detrimental health and safety ramifications of heating with solid fuels nor do they discuss more cost-effective alternatives that would promote improved energy conservation, health and safety. (Freedman, 2001)."

"In most areas of California you will pay more to heat with wood than to heat with gas. CA ARB, 2001"

For our study area of San Francisco $1 billion is spent each year on regulations to reduce ozone which is worst in the summer. The 1994 Fullerton San Francisco Bay Area Economic Report (Hall, 1995) estimates that $5.3 million in health benefits will result from these smog-reducing controls. The value of successful cleanup of car pollution for this area is attributed with yearly health savings of $604 million.
It estimates that the yearly loss to the Bay Area from PM2.5 pollution is $2.1 billion. The cost of wood burning was $1.1 billion per year. 15% of the population burning wood for home heating and ambience, costs six million people both in health, well being and quality of life but also in real dollars. Each pound of wood burned costs the entire community $2 in increased medical costs and lost work days. That is equivalent to $40 for an average fire burning 20 pounds of wood. "Simply banning or limiting wood fires could potentially save many lives at little or no cost" (Fairley, 1994).
The question that we must face is why the government and our "Air Quality Districts" and Environmental Agencies refuse to clear our air with the most cost effective decisions.

Medical costs continue to increase. Why not decrease pollution to promote better health as the Fullerton study recommends? It is cheaper to be well.

Perception is Everything

A rhapsody on wax logs:"They could see the white suburbs with their twinkling lights and swimming pools, the sprawling black townships, covered by a murdy coating of smoke from a multitude of paraffin and wood fires, the long, flat roads radiation out to all corners and the bleak dirt mounds, the discarded debis of the race for South Africas gold." (EVERY SECRET THING , My Family, My Country Gillian Slovo Little, Brown, and CO. PP 282,.P.133)

Timber companies are selling wood for burning and sawdust and paper garbage as wax sawdust logs and compressed pellets. The sawdust logs and pellets are sold as less polluting. They are actually expensive and polluting. The quote from G. Slovo, above, shows a different attitude in other parts of the world.

Below is a quote from New York State - it is talking about the stench of pig farms but it could be translated to Napa county, California with it's cows and it's choking wood smoke. In fact methane, ammonia and wood smoke are a quality of life issue all around the country.

"You like to think of a wine region as something that's a little bit more upscale, and it's kind of hard to be upscale if the air doesn't smell too good." -ANNE PARKER, a tourism official in New York's Finger Lakes region, on the area's growing hog industry. (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/12/nyregion/12PIGS.html?todaysheadlines)

At last an Iowa Senator proposed a tax credit for collecting and using agricultural methane as a fuel this year. (Chinese farmers collect and use methane fuel.) Conserving energy is saving money and saving the environment. Methane burns much cleaner than wood.

 

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