Now Wood Stoves Are Killing Us?

When I saw this post my first thought was “Why can’t they make up their friggin’ minds?”

It seems that now wood stoves are even more dangerous because some can release toxic pollutants.

I remember when there was a push for people to use wood stoves to heat their homes because they used ‘renewable’ and ‘eco-friendly’ fuel. We used a wood stove to heat The Manse for over 13 years, going through about 3 cords of wood between the end of October through the mid-April. It was a lot less expensive than using propane, which at one point was almost $4 per gallon. The Manse would use around 200 gallons of propane per month during the heating season if we used the furnace for heat. Using firewood, which cost us anywhere between $200 and $325 per cord over the 13 years we used it to heat The Manse, was a heck of a lot cheaper. Yes, we still used the furnace, mostly if the outside temperature was below zero because the wood stove couldn’t quite keep up. At other times we used the furnace if we were going to be away for a day or more. We still used propane because our water heater was fueled by propane as was our clothes dryer. Even then we maybe used about 50 gallons per month.

Now we’re being told it may be a Bad Thing^TM.

Research reveals that even modern eco-design stoves can emit dangerous pollutants indoors. Ventilation and fuel choice greatly influence exposure levels.

Researchers at the University of Surrey’s Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE) are cautioning residents about the health risks posed by wood-burning stoves, including those built to modern eco-design standards. Their findings show that using these stoves can lead to short-term exposure to high concentrations of harmful pollutants, which may present health hazards for people living in affected homes.

Published in Scientific Reports, the study involved monitoring several homes in Guildford, Surrey, that used different types of heating stoves and clean solid fuels, such as seasoned wood, kiln-dried wood, wood briquettes, and smokeless coal. Measurements focused on pollutants including ultrafine particles (UFPs), fine particulate matter (PM2.5), black carbon (BC), and carbon monoxide (CO). The results showed that open fireplaces were the highest emitters, raising PM2.5 levels up to seven times more than modern stoves.

I have seen the problem when people are loading more firewood or cleaning out ashes, particularly if they do not have the chimney and air dampers open well prior to doing that. After years of using wood stoves that go back to my childhood, and quite a bit during my college years, one learns how to minimize the above mentioned pollutants from entering the living space. It isn’t perfect by any means, but once you figure it out it isn’t all that difficult.

While the linked post mentions different fuels, here in New Hampshire we tend to use seasoned or kiln-dried wood. I am not including pellet stoves in this mix because they are a different technology and are not ‘passive’ stoves, meaning they require power to operate the pellet feed and burn blower. They aren’t configured the way wood stoves are. (For full disclosure, the wood stove at The Manse did have a built-in blower that helped circulate the hot air generated by the stove which allowed it to heat a much larger area that it would otherwise.)

But do the findings in the study in the linked post really mean we have a problem? Yes, the study took place in the UK, not the US, but does that invalidate the findings? Probably not. That we have a lot of forests here in the US, and particularly in New Hampshire, wood stoves are likely to continue to be used to heat homes for quite some time.

To be honest, I am contemplating putting in a wood stove here at The Gulch. Not today. Not tomorrow. But sometime in the future. It wouldn’t need to be large, certainly a lot smaller than the one in The Manse as The Gulch is less than half the size of The Manse. We don’t use a lot of heating oil during the winter, going through between 80 and 110 gallons per month during the heating season. I do miss the ‘warmth’ of a wood stove as it always seemed different to me than heat from a furnace. Even the feline contingent loved the wood stove in The Manse as they would gather around the “warm box” during the cold winter months. So did the humans.

I’d hate to think that might go away “for our own good”.