This is absurdly hyperbolic. Few people are going to die because they made a wood fire in a fireplace 10-20 times a year. The reason wood fires cause serious health problems in the developing world is that they’re put in the center of a one-room house, with no chimney, and used for heating/cooking/etc. The whole room fills with smoke, to the point that eyes sting and it’s hard to breathe, and the smoke noticeably impacts visibility. The density of smoke in such a room is probably at least an order of magnitude greater than in a room with a fireplace and in the corner. Additionally, such houses are filled with wood smoke all day every day of the year. The hearth fire is an essential part of the home. [Source: my parents are anthropologists and I spent a substantial chunk of my childhood hanging out in this kind of home.]
That said, I’ll absolutely agree that spending time in such an environment is dramatically more unpleasant than spending time in a room with several heavy smokers, and almost certainly more damaging. Which is why it seems ridiculous that a certain sort of person will both make a big stink about someone smoking nearby outdoors, and also romanticize rural peasant life and wax poetic about how much less toxic life used to be in the past.
"This is absurdly hyperbolic. Few people are going to die because they made a wood fire in a fireplace 10-20 times a year."
Did you even read the linked papers? There is direct and plausible evidence that recreational wood burning in the West is a significant contributor to pollution in residential areas, with the pollution itself clearly linked to public health. So basically, you're flat out wrong (or arguing a straw man, if I take your comment literally) - yes, dozens of people are going to die each year because of recreational wood burning.
Did you read the linked paper? It’s a literature review which includes an assessment of a huge assortment of papers, mostly about stuff like forest fires and fires used for clearing agricultural land. The studies which were related to the health effects of indoor recreational wood fires were mostly small sample sizes, pretty minor effects.
Here are some bits from the paper:
“To date, only a single controlled exposure study of human
exposure to woodsmoke itself seems to have been published (Barregard et al., 2006; Sallsten et al., 2006). Thirteen subjects were exposed to realistic concentrations of woodsmoke (200–300 μg/m3 PM2.5) generated under controlled conditions for two 4-h sessions, spaced 1 wk apart. In this study, exposure to woodsmoke resulted in small exposure-related changes in levels of inflammatory mediators and coagulation factors.”
“A questionnaire study of respiratory symptoms compared residents of 600 homes in a high woodsmoke area of Seattle, WA, with 600 homes of a low woodsmoke area. [...] When all age groups were combined, no significant differences were observed between the high- and low-exposure areas.”
“In Seattle, WA, 326 elementary school children were stud- ied during the heating seasons of 1988–1989 and 1989–1990. [...] The 26 children with asthma showed a significant decrement (18 ml/μg/m3 PM2.5) for both measures of lung function. Children without asthma showed no significant changes in lung function associ- ated with PM values.”
“In contrast, in a larger, prospective study of 904 infants in Connecticut and Virginia, Pettigrew et al. found no relation- ship between either woodstove or fireplace use and either single episodes of otitis media or recurrent otitis media, which was defined as 4 or more episodes during 1 yr (Pettigrew et al., 2004). Data on infant respiratory symptoms (in this case, a physician’s diagnosis of an ear infection) and hours of use of secondary heating sources were collected in telephone interviews with the mothers every 2 wk for 1 yr. Although both woodstove and fireplace use were significantly associated with the outcomes in bivariate models, these associations were absent in multivariate models that adjusted for gender, race, day care, number of chil- dren in the household, duration of breast-feeding, winter heating season, use of gas appliances, season of birth, maternal education, maternal history of asthma and allergy, and pets.”
And here, the most “damning” bits of summary. They’re awfully circumspect.
“Surprisingly relatively few studies examining the health impacts of woodsmoke have been conducted in developed countries, partly due to the difficulty of disentangling risks due to woodsmoke from those associated with other pollutants also present. In addition, most available studies are ecologic in design, limiting the ability to infer causality. Those that have been done, however, indicate that exposure to the smoke from residential woodburning is associated with a variety of adverse respiratory health effects, which are no different in kind and, with present knowledge, show no consistent difference in magnitude of effect from other combustion-derived ambient particles.”
“Since source apportionment studies show that woodsmoke is a major contributor to PM in many communities, it is likely that woodsmoke exposure plays a role in the spectrum of adverse effects linked to PM exposure. The large effects seen at higher exposures in the developing world provide additional evidence of the toxicity of woodsmoke.”
The paper’s conclusion includes:
“Finally, returning to the questions posed at the start, we conclude that although there is a large and growing body of evidence linking exposure to wood/biomass smoke itself with both acute and chronic illness, there is insufficient evidence at present to support regulating it separately from its individual components, especially fine particulate matter. In addition, there is insufficient evidence at present to conclude that woodsmoke particles are significantly less or more damaging to health than general ambient fine particles.”
* * * * * * *
But if you read the main story under discussion, we instead get:
"The unhappy truth about burning wood has been scientifically established to a moral certainty: That nice, cozy fire in your fireplace is bad for you. It is bad for your children. It is bad for your neighbors and their children. [...] In fact, wood smoke often contributes more harmful particulates to urban air than any other source.
"In the developing world, the burning of solid fuel in the home is a genuine scourge, second only to poor sanitation as an environmental health risk. In 2000, the World Health Organization estimated that it caused nearly 2 million premature deaths each year—considerably more than were caused by traffic accidents."
The first paragraph is hyperbolic (there are a few places in industrial countries where woodsmoke is the biggest source of pollution, but this is still pretty low by world and historical standards, and typically those areas don’t have much other air pollution to speak of, so this is unsurprising). The stuff about “moral certainty” is just crap. Maybe if you live in a place with relatively high population density and every house is mainly heated by wood, you’ll get noticeable amounts of air pollution, but this is also a different case than the author is trying to make us feel guilty about, which is having a fireplace in your living room every-once-in-a-while.
The second paragraph is much worse though, because, while accurate, is grossly misleading when included in an argument about industrialized countries without providing additional context and explanation.
* * * * *
In summary, if the conclusion was “don’t heat your house all the time using only a woodstove, especially if you have infants or asthmatics in the house” then I would agree 100%. Or if the summary was “we really should work on improving access to gas and electricity to the developing world, so they can stop using dangerous wood fires for heating and cooking”, I would also agree 100%. I would even agree if he said “we should convince people in those US/European ski towns that they should use gas for heating, and limit their wood burning to the occasional fire in the fireplace”. But unfortunately, the author didn’t limit himself to supportable conclusions.
One gripe I have about this article is that it tells people to burn gas. Okay... it won't harm your lungs (so much) but will help increase global warming (nice). The contents are fine, though the annalogies are bad (a diesel engine indling in the room? common).
Anyway, people will keep burning wood in their homes, just because they like it. Most everybody knows the hazards of smoking and keep smoking anyway (including health professionals)...
I guess people banned public smoking because the smell is so ofensive to others, not because they were really worried about their health.
How go you propose that an individual heat their house if not with gas, propane, oil, or wood? Electric heat, except in the case of perhaps a space heater, is extremely inefficient (and in most cases the electricity itself is made by burning fossil fuels). Unless there have been some dramatic technological improvements recently, solar and geothermal heating are not practical in the northern US where temps can drop well below zero Fahrenheit. Of these options, I'm pretty sure that gas and propane have the lowest environmental impact.
Electric heat pumps are more efficient than any of those. Whole system included. The combination of {heat engine + heat pump} -- i.e., the power plant generating electricity, followed by the electricity powering a heat pump in your house -- is more efficient than using the same heat in your house directly. E.g.: 1 Joule of heat, in a power plant, can bring to you 2 Joules of heat in your house (through an intermediate of 0.5 Joules of electricity).
This doesn't violate the 1st law of thermodynamics. You are not converting 1 Joule of heat into 2 Joules of heat. You are using 1 Joule of heat to move 2 Joules of heat out of a large heat sink (the outside atmosphere, or maybe the ground).
It doesn't violate the 2nd law either. A power plant runs on very high temperature differences -- Carnot ratio Th/Tc as high as 5.0 (1,500 K / 300 K). A heat pump runs on very small temperature differences, maybe 1.1 (e.g. 300 K / 280 K). Together, you can translate a small movement of heat, at a high temperature difference, into a large movement of heat, at a low temperature difference.
The capital costs of retrofitting a ground source are prohibitive though, so 'just use a heat pump' isn't useful advice for millions of people that live in regions where the air gets cold enough to limit the effectiveness of a heat pump.
I live in an area of the US where the temperature ranges from approximately -15F to 32F for 3 months of the year. Heat pumps are not particularly efficient in those temperature ranges. In more mild climates, heat pumps are great. It's just not a panacea.
My dad with asthma has severe problems in the winter because everybody in his village heats with wood - in the middle of western Germany (they do have other heaters, but like the wood, is what I mean). So definitely not just a third world problem.
In Germany the heating with wood was extremely on the rise in recent years, even in big cities you smell it on the street in winter. And in the countryside it is much worse, which is a shame given that people move there for the clean air, among other things.
My brother lives in a fairly dense, turn of the century American neighborhood, with lots of old homes with fireplaces. I went running on Christmas Eve, and at first relished the smell of woodsmoke from all of the burning fires. Within a mile I realized that it felt like I was running with a cigar in my mouth. This article is no joke.
Having grown up in a rural home heated by a wood stove, one thing this article says hits home: respiratory problems in small children. My father stopped using the wood stove after installing electric heat, only using the wood stove for the coldest nights.There was an immediate benefit for all 5 of his children.
We have a neighbor who burns wood in their fireplace during winter. At times outside in my yard, I am a few homes away, the smell is very acrid. Worse, my dogs are affected. It took me awhile to connect their tail down behavior with my neighbor's wood burning fetish.
Without wind the smell just hangs there. I have to set my system to recirculate to keep it out of my house. I figure it this way, if it smell so bad and causes my nose to wrinkle at the acrid aspects of it it cannot be good for anyone.
Yeah, I misread your comment as "in the developed world.."..
Having felt the effect of "fireplace smoke" without a chimney I find it strange that people live like that. OTOH, African houses are probably much more open than the house I'm used to..
That said, I’ll absolutely agree that spending time in such an environment is dramatically more unpleasant than spending time in a room with several heavy smokers, and almost certainly more damaging. Which is why it seems ridiculous that a certain sort of person will both make a big stink about someone smoking nearby outdoors, and also romanticize rural peasant life and wax poetic about how much less toxic life used to be in the past.