So if I’m reading this right, for never smokers who lived in a house that used a woodstove between 1-29 days of the year have the same risk as smokers who used one everyday if the year?
1-29 days is… vague. However, the study also does not seem to consider the much, much tighter particulate emission rules that new wood stoves and similar have had to follow. The EPA has tightened it every few years (I think the last one was 2015?)
An old wood stove is almost nothing (and I literally mean almost nothing) to a modern wood stove in efficiency or air cleanliness. It would almost be like if you did a study about the toxicity of cars but used data from when we had leaded gas. There’s still a toxicity there but your results are going to be a mess.
Research on whether dual burning stoves that reprocess their own exhaust and don’t leak like old ones (the ones you’re referring to) or other systems could be done, but this is baseline research.
You can use the same logic to attack the choice of fuels, or species of wood, or types of seals and whether air is taken from the inside or the outside of the structure, and all of it would also be as valid as your argument. You could also try to invalidate this for only focusing on women. But, while valid arguments (as is yours), it sidesteps the purpose of the study.
It’s simply not the hypothesis of this particular study, which was simply establish a correlation between the presence & use of wood burning fuel in fire burning devices and lung cancer incidence in women.
It's still an important investigation because unfortunately things are never idiot proof. For example, my parents have a pellet stove and it was not uncommon for it to occasionally leak, followed by my parents putting in a shoddy self-made fix.
These kind of studies could indicate some flaw in the way we're creating wood stoves, or some consumer-related failure that needs to be better worked around. Or it could be that consumers are just using older wood stoves. But you gotta start with a baseline.
If you mean the summary in the abstract, they report three hazard ratios:
1. Women reporting more than 30 days of fireplace use per year (smokers and nonsmokers both included) had 68% more lung cancer than women reporting that their home didn't contain a fireplace (again, smokers and nonsmokers both included).
2. Non-smoking women reporting more than 30 days of fireplace use per year had 99% more lung cancer than non-smoking women reporting that their home didn't contain a fireplace.
3. Non-smoking women reporting 1-29 days of fireplace use per year had 64% more lung cancer than non-smoking women reporting that their home didn't contain a fireplace.
Not actually reported, but present by overwhelmingly strong implication:
1b. Women (without regard to ever-smoker status) reporting 1-29 days of fireplace use per year had no significant increase in lung cancer compared to women reporting that they didn't even have a fireplace. (Or else the results summary would have noted that they did.)
These are funny numbers with suspicious lacunae in the reporting of results. I'm not inclined to take them very seriously. At the same time, it is undoubtedly true that inhaling smoke is bad for you.
The study terminology always treats wood-burning stoves and fireplaces as equivalent. I would estimate that of the fixtures in the USA that are either wood-burning stoves or fireplaces, approximately 100% are fireplaces. This makes the study worthless if you want to draw conclusions about stoves, but OK for fireplaces. On the other hand, it doesn't really matter that the study won't let you draw conclusions about stoves, because there would be no point in having such conclusions.
High. I never used to notice. But after paying more attention to air quality in my environment, I now notice when air quality is particularly bad when before I hadn't. Sitting around a campfire feels like at least pack of cigarettes was smoked.
Yes, am wondering the same. Recently went camping and the fire was lit for effects as we cooked food on mini/portable stoves. It’s horrible I’d say, the smoke is thick, gets into everything but all I got is go with the program, it keeps the mosquitoes away and it’s charming. I wonder how long till this culture gets a reality check…
Does that seem unusual or alarming to you? Lots of fun and enjoyable things have tradeoffs that people willingly make. There' a balance to be struck between having fun in the moment and your long-term health, and most people tolerate a fair bit of risk in exchange for fun. Otherwise, nobody would drink alcohol, go skiing, etc.
No it doesn’t. I think my point was that people budget their carcinogenic exposure in non-optimal, hard to rationalize ways. Like living in places with terrible air quality (California) and then being concerned about gas stoves.
