From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
No S**t Sherlock!
Wood burners are a more expensive way to heat homes than gas boilers or heat pumps, research shows.
A study found that as well as causing significant health and environmental dangers for the home’s occupants and their neighbours, it is at least 15% more costly to heat a home using a wood burner rather than a gas boiler.
Rachel Pidgeon, of the charity Impact on Urban Health, which focuses on health inequalities in cities and which funded the study, said air pollution from wood burning in the UK had doubled over the past decade, with serious consequences for people’s health.
“This research dispels the myth that wood burning is a cheaper energy alternative whilst shining a light on the toxic effect it has on the air we breathe,” she said. “It’s vital that urban communities understand the connection between burning and the air pollution it creates.”
There was a 40% increase in sales of wood burners between 2021 and 2022. Research shows that more affluent people, attracted by the aesthetic appeal of a fire, are driving that increase.
However, a growing body of evidence highlights the environmental and health damage caused, with scientists saying that people who burn wood are subjecting themselves – and their neighbourhoods – to high levels of the most dangerous small particulate pollution, PM2.5, which can work its way deep into the body, causing a range of severe health issues including heart disease, strokes, asthma and cancer.
Last year, a study from Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, found that even “eco design” wood burning stoves produced 450 times more toxic air pollution than gas central heating, while older stoves, now banned from sale, produced 3,700 times more.
Another study found that wood burning in homes produced more small particle pollution than all road traffic in the UK.
The latest research, carried by Global Action Plan for Impact on Urban Health, found that the perception among the public was often that wood burners at least offered a cheaper source of energy.
The pollution from wood burners has always been obvious to sane people. After all our ancestors decided hundreds of years ago that it probably was not a particularly good idea, though an improvement on burning dung I suppose.
But the climate change fundamentalists decided a long time ago that CO2 emissions were a much more important consideration than people’s actual health.
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