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:

• General
  • WHO estimates that  7 million deaths annually are linked to air pollution.
  • "Adverse Health Effects and Regulatory Challenges Related to Outdoor Wood Boilers and Residential Wood Combustion" (183 KB) by Philip R.E. Johnson which summarizes the problem and states "Current evidence suggests that the PM2.5 NAAQS [National Ambient Air Quality Standards] is not an effective means to protect populations from peaking wood smoke exposures.
• 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 switch out 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.
  • 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
    • 2003 WOOD SMOKE Brochure Black & White (183KB PDF) Annotated version of the brochure with references (143KB PDF)
    • 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.
    • Medical effects fact sheet
    • OWB Fact Sheet (102KB PDF)
    • OWB Brochure, September 2008 (228KB PDF)
  • Slide Show Provides a quick introduction.
  • Our experience has shown that IQair machines with the coarse filter attachment (one per room) provide superior protection during smoke emergencies for me. They are expensive. There are a number of brands of air cleaner which claim to remove air pollution as well as a number of low cost (about $50) do-it-yourself projects to be found on YouTube.com. IQair has never provided financial support to Clean Air Revival, Inc.
  • A new 5-minute video featuring the Tasmanian President of the Australian Lung Foundation, Dr James Markos: http://woodsmoke.3sc.net/wood-vs-cigarette-smoke.
• Medical Effects
  • UltrafineParticle Health Effects A really fine summary by John R. Froines, Ph.D.  Powerpoint Presentation (2208 KB)
    Southern California Particle Center. Powerpoint Presentation (2208 KB)
  • Excellent survey slide-show of health effects    
  • Excellent Summary of the Medical Arguments against wood burning prepared by The Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment (UPHE)   (111KB PDF)    A  geat list of Wood Burning Facts from the same organization (2 MB) by Dr. Harriet Ammann. Two of the slides were generated by Burning Issues
  • Fine particulate air pollution linked with increased autism risk. (December 2014)
  • GASP presentation entitled "Effects of AIr Pollution on Cardiovascular Disease" (1.1MB)
  • GASP presentation entitled "Air Pollution and the respiratory system" (7.6MB)
  • 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.
  • Heating and Cooking: Wood smoke from heating and cooking raises lung cancer risk.
  • DESTINATION BRAIN: Mexico City children surveyed exhibit cognitive impairments in memory, problem solving and judgment and deficiencies in their sense of smell.
  • Air Pollution Associated with Diabetes Prevalence   (197 KB)  Increasing exposure to fine particulate matter air pollution may be one factor explaining the dramatic rise in diabetes prevalence over the past few decades, according to research published in the October issue of Diabetes Care.    (October 2011)
• Legal
  • October 27, 2014. British Columbia Supreme Court Judge order "cease and desist" order using fireplace. Newspaper story and ruling.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 2010 judgment in Quebec Small Claims Court awarded damages to smoke victim. Actual judgment ( 598KB)
• Scientific Papers
  • John A. Cooper's 1980 paper on residential wood burning is the earliest 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.
  • "Controlling Soot Might Quickly Reverse a Century of Global Warming" published by Wired, July 29, 2010; the title says it all.  This dramatically illustrates that when considering wood burning or any combustion carbon neutral is very different from Climate Neutral, indeed.
  • 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.