Are Wood burning domestic stoves a greater death risk than diesel road vehicles ?

[mcowgill]

Which MG? I used to have an F (without the VVC) - lovely car, but horrible to work on due to the engine location...

 

It was an F VVC, it's since been followed by a 160 VVC TF and now a Chinese 135 TF LE500 - a glutton for punishment!   

[Nick C]

It was an F VVC, it's since been followed by a 160 VVC TF and now a Chinese 135 TF LE500 - a glutton for punishment!   

 

How do the TFs compare on coil springs? Mine (on Hydragas) was wonderful to drive, but I got rid of it when it started showing the warning signs of an impending HG failure...

[Ohmisterporter]

It has been a pleasant day here today, just right for sitting in the garden with a good book. Unfortunately one of the neighbours decided it was a great day to light a bonfire, the smoke and smell of which drove us indoors. I think there was wood and garden waste being burned this time but in the past there has been the distinctive smell of burning plastic. How dangerous are the smoke particles from a bonfire compared to burning wood in a log burner? 

[AndyID]

Rover were. The K series engine was designed to be a lean burn engine.

Whether it would have been accepted or not I don’t know. Originally cats were mainly there to clean up I burnt hydrocarbons and change CO to CO2. But now also deal with oxides of nitrogen.

A lean burn engine quite possibly has a very high combustion temperature, putting the generation of NOx through the roof. However whether they were getting round this I do not know

All the best

Katy

I found this article about the various types of catalytic converters. Quite informative I think.

 

http://www.meca.org/technology/technology-details?id=5

[PhilJ W]

It has been a pleasant day here today, just right for sitting in the garden with a good book. Unfortunately one of the neighbours decided it was a great day to light a bonfire, the smoke and smell of which drove us indoors. I think there was wood and garden waste being burned this time but in the past there has been the distinctive smell of burning plastic. How dangerous are the smoke particles from a bonfire compared to burning wood in a log burner? 

There is a bonfire ban hereabouts, I thought such bans were common throughout the country.

[Reorte]

It has been a pleasant day here today, just right for sitting in the garden with a good book. Unfortunately one of the neighbours decided it was a great day to light a bonfire, the smoke and smell of which drove us indoors. I think there was wood and garden waste being burned this time but in the past there has been the distinctive smell of burning plastic. How dangerous are the smoke particles from a bonfire compared to burning wood in a log burner?

A bit of a bonfire smell in the air is part of autumn as far as I'm concerned but it's another case where people really do need to exercise some common sense - don't light it if it'll blow smoke right on to your neighbours (which probably rules out most urban locations) and certainly don't chuck anything like plastic on it. Some people would burn piles of old tyres and wonder why others make a fuss.

[mezzoman253]

There is a bonfire ban hereabouts, I thought such bans were common throughout the country.

https://www.gov.uk/garden-bonfires-rules

 

Rob

[LBRJ]

To answer the OP

 

I have never felt in danger of being run over by a wood burning stove, but quite often seem to have to risk life and limb when simply trying to cross the street.

 

However "bad" wood burners are, they are much less bad for you than living in a cold and damp environment.

 

Bonfires are a very good way of getting rid of garden waste.

 

Too many people seem to have too much time to worry about things that do not really matter.

 

 

I mean, just for a minute really (as in REALLY) consider the possibility of living right next door to a main road, or having a wood burner in the lounge, and then take account of the life extinction possibilities each one entails.........

[BWsTrains]

I listened to a very impassioned talk last night by a former colleague about the killer wood burning stoves lurking in our midst.

He claimed that the more effective the house insulation, the more deadly will be the wood burning stove.  A thermostatic control will turn combustion down increasing killer PM2.5 emission !

 

 

Is my old ‘Evironmental Engineer’ colleague a crackpot ?

dh

Its nice to pop by and see where this thread has meandered over several days.

 

With that in mind I don't feel too OT to note that after just a few hours of wandering around central Milan on foot yesterday I'm choking on the vast amounts of fine combustion particulates, The locals here smoke like chimneys and especially the young, still puffing away "socailly". Scary health risk, I've been "froggy throated" ever since coming to Italy for a city based holiday but they do at least seem to have the vehicle based emissions more under control these days.

 

By comparison the UK was much better but still some way behind Australia where someone smoking on the street has become the exception.

 

PS "burning off" was banned in urban Aus decades ago. IMO nothing wrong with a good clean hot burn but the LCD used to burn all and anything, damp leaves being a particular (or should that be particulate?) favourite, ideally set alight to smoulder in the gutter for maximum nuisance!.

 

We get 250Litres garden waste removed every 2 weeks, turned to compost commercially so who needs to burn. In more rural settings chop and compost should suffice

 

 

Colin 

Edited October 11, 2018 by BWsTrains

[Reorte]

We get 250Litres garden waste removed every 2 weeks, turned to compost commercially so who needs to burn. In more rural settings chop and compost should suffice

I generate more garden waste than I've got space to compost.

[Andy Hayter]

https://www.gov.uk/garden-bonfires-rules

 

Rob

 

Rob

I think Ian and Phil were referring to French rules on bonfires, where there is now an absolute ban on burning green waste except where the commune is more than 10km (I think) from a green waste collection centre.

 

As for composting everything - ever tried bindweed roots?  Not a success with me, though I do succeed with dandelion roots - against all advice.  Nettle roots are also a so and so that don't go into my compost.

[runs as required]

It seems kiiller woodburning stoves feature in today's Grauniad on line. 

Strange that the socialist Liberal Guardian suggests poor combustion to be a greater threat to the house owner than to neighbouhood residents affected by the PM2.5 invisible but attractively smelling particulates.

 

And the Today programme this morning resulted in wife crowing over me at breakfast that it was a good thing she wouldn't allow me to eat steak*

dh

 

*except when she goes out - and the local butcher greets me with "Wey Aye! Yor lass oot fer loonch then?"

[PhilJ W]

As for composting everything - ever tried bindweed roots?  Not a success with me, though I do succeed with dandelion roots - against all advice.  Nettle roots are also a so and so that don't go into my compost.

Certain weed roots should never be put in the compost especially bindweed. Many years ago I had a garden with an infestation of Japanese Knotweed, before it was compulsory to report it. I successfully disposed of it by cutting it back to a few inches and filling the hollow stems with rock salt, it never came back but nothing grew in that corner of the garden for a few years. Getting back on topic, carbon monoxide is the product of incomplete combustion. If you have to remove a large ammount of ash the wood burner isn't burning properly and producing CO. There can be several reasons for this but most often its down to the flue not being swept often enough.

[tomparryharry]

Thanks to RMWeb, I'm in hospital now.

 

I parked the car, and stepped out. I saw a killer woodburning stove coming up the lane, but I managed to dodge out of the way...

 

However, I failed to see the AGA coming the other way, and it sideswiped me with its hot water tank. I was then pounced upon by a passing Rayburn. Pots & pans everywhere.. I was assisted to my feet by a passing gaggle of Country Life journalists. Luckily for me, they spotted me because of my Barbour wax jacket......

 

Tootle pip!

 

Ian.

Edited October 11, 2018 by tomparryharry

[The Stationmaster]

I think I ought to stop looking at this thread because of my guilt - I drive a diesel car and we have a woodburning stove.  Just as well I quit smoking 20 years ago or I'd be getting the blame for killing people through 'passive smoking' as well.  Maybe I should take up drug dealing because that seems to be far more socially acceptable nowadays (except on 'The Archers')?

[Sheffield]

I refuse to feel guilty about these issues. Why do I have wood burning stoves? Because the environmentalists told me it was better to burn wood than oil, gas or coal. Why do I drive a deisel vehicle? Because the environmentalists told me they were less poluting than petrol vehicles. I wish they would make up their minds, I fully expect to hear shortly how bad batteries are for us.

[hmrspaul]

 I fully expect to hear shortly how bad batteries are for us.

Of course they are. There is an idea we can turn the world over to dragging great big batteries around made of very rare elements that are only available in a few places, and in those places they are tearing the world apart to get at them. We don't even manage to recycle locally the, at the moment, much smaller use of batteries that we have.

 

As to how anyone came to the belief that burning wood, either in uncontrolled stoves or in great big power stations is also beyond me. There are no easy environmental answers! At college I was taught that wave power was the answer, which superficially appears to be correct but it hasn't happened very much nearly 50 years later. As to the death toll of raptors by mis-placed wind turbines.....

 

Paul

[Mark Saunders]

I refuse to feel guilty about these issues. Why do I have wood burning stoves? Because the environmentalists told me it was better to burn wood than oil, gas or coal. Why do I drive a deisel vehicle? Because the environmentalists told me they were less poluting than petrol vehicles. I wish they would make up their minds, I fully expect to hear shortly how bad batteries are for us.

 

I do not intend to change my car from Diesel to anything else as I am taking a whole of life approach as the amount of new CO2 to produce a replacement!

 

Mark Saunders

[tomparryharry]

I refuse to feel guilty about these issues. Why do I have wood burning stoves? Because the environmentalists told me it was better to burn wood than oil, gas or coal. Why do I drive a deisel vehicle? Because the environmentalists told me they were less poluting than petrol vehicles. I wish they would make up their minds, I fully expect to hear shortly how bad batteries are for us.

 

Oh No! You're not using batteries, are you?

 

Having left hospital after the AGA/Rayburn episode, I'm now in trouble with the NSPCC. Children have to be a certain age to operate my sedan chair....

 

Rick Shaw.

[russ p]

Apparently ,so I was told this week there are energy companies which only buy power from green sources such as wind. You apparently pay a bit more for these.

Unfortunately my enquiry as to whether there was a similar company that only bought from coal or nuclear generated power drew a blank!

Was only considering railwaymen's and miners jobs

[jonny777]

I think I ought to stop looking at this thread because of my guilt - I drive a diesel car and we have a woodburning stove.  Just as well I quit smoking 20 years ago or I'd be getting the blame for killing people through 'passive smoking' as well.  Maybe I should take up drug dealing because that seems to be far more socially acceptable nowadays (except on 'The Archers')?

 

 

I think the average forest or heath fire will send far greater quantities of particulates into the air than most wood burning stoves could manage in a lifetime; and heaven only knows what particles are spewed out by volcanic eruptions. 

[Guest]

Of course they are. There is an idea we can turn the world over to dragging great big batteries around made of very rare elements that are only available in a few places, and in those places they are tearing the world apart to get at them. We don't even manage to recycle locally the, at the moment, much smaller use of batteries that we have.

Rare earth elements aren't actually that rare...

 

The problem with recycling small batteries is that they're small and pretty useless beyond their original application.

If you are pulling the battery out of a car you can pop the cells straight into grid storage and get years more use out of them.

[Edwardian]

I listened to a very impassioned talk last night by a former colleague about the killer wood burning stoves lurking in our midst.

He claimed that the more effective the house insulation, the more deadly will be the wood burning stove.  A thermostatic control will turn combustion down increasing killer PM2.5 emission !

 

PM2.5 are atmospheric Particular Matter with a diameter  >2.5 micrometres and invisible except with a electron microscope.

More deadly than visible dust, PM2.5 can pass through the lungs and enter the blood stream and brain unfiltered.  This causes DNA mutations, heart and respiratory diseases and is an influence on mental conditions (Alzheimers).

Worldwide PM2.5 emissions killed 3 million in 2012, more than malaria and flu. In China 800,00 deaths; in India 600,000, in Europe 480,000 (WHO modelling with Univ of Bath).

 

In UK  PM2.5 emissions may now exceed emissions from all road transport. 2013 DEFRA figs: 17% for PM2.5; 18% for road transport.  

He claims that much more cost effective than prioritising transport emissions would be banning wood burning stoves in well-to-do middle class residential areas.

He was talking  in Wylam, now a rather posh Tyne valley residential “village”. Someone commented that it was a more hazardous place to live nowadays than in its former smoky mining and early 'Puffing Billy' past of 200 years ago!

 

We live in Gateshead which is still a ‘smokeless zone’ (preventing coal burning PM10 emissions). But this is not enforced for burning wood in stoves. Noticeable once more in these autumnal evenings is a pleasant aroma of woodsmoke on the air. I never realised the smell was a KILLER !

 

Is my old ‘Evironmental Engineer’ colleague a crackpot ?

dh

 

I was going to quip "only if they set fire to the thatch", but now, having read your post in detail, I realise that I am completely f--k-d!

[Ozexpatriate]

I think the average forest or heath fire will send far greater quantities of particulates into the air than most wood burning stoves could manage in a lifetime; and heaven only knows what particles are spewed out by volcanic eruptions.

Living with large scale wildfires in the last two summers (mostly human-caused) is very unpleasant with very unhealthy air. The high particulate content is of course quite visible and obvious when breathing the air outside. Being inside with filters helps. This last summer we had air as unhealthy as the most polluted cities in the world. It presented a serious health risk for people with breathing-related ailments.

 

This was a sunset from one of the bad days.

 

This one is an early afternoon shot from directly underneath the smoke pall from a relatively small wildfire last year.

Colours are slightly off, but not by too much.

 

Volcanoes do emit many unpleasant things. One of the byproducts of the recent Kilauea eruptions, besides the more obvious "lava bombs" (which injured some people including tourists on a boat), was volcanic laze - a portmanteau word suggesting lava and haze. It is formed when molten lava meets the ocean and produces a cloud of steam, hydrochloric acid and tiny shards of volcanic glass.  This is very local to the lava/ocean boundary and not a concern once you are a distance some km away.

 

I think the point of the OP is localized effects rather than ejecta distributed in the stratosphere. Nor are we really talking about things like natural versus anthropogenic CO₂.

Edited October 11, 2018 by Ozexpatriate

[43110andyb]

We have 2 wood burning stoves and have had the first installed now for over 10 years, when lit they give out no visible smoke and are odourless when stood outside! We're currently burning 3 year seasoned wood through a thorough drying regime and have our chimneys swept every 2 years with less soot than can fill a small supermarket carrier bag to show for the sweeps best efforts.

So at present we will will carry on with our current lifestyle and personally have no regrets or concerns environmentaly or health related!

As an aside- Christmas morning with the woodburner lit and presents being opened will be a priceless memory for us and the kids for many years I hope!!