Editor:
It was noted in a recent article (“California’s Wildfire Smoke and the Climate Crisis: Four Things to Know,” Sept. 7) that “Wildfire smoke is toxic, containing substances such as carbon monoxide and benzene, a carcinogen.”
In fact, all wood smoke is toxic and contains several known carcinogens, including benzene. This includes wood smoke from wood stoves.
Twelve years ago, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality performed air toxics monitoring in Klamath Falls (population around 22,000). The DEQ estimated that wood stoves emitted 8 tons of benzene there during the wood-burning season. Other heat sources emitted almost none.
Wood smoke is a potent mix of toxic compounds and fine particles that are linked not only to cancer, but also to developmental harm in children, heart attacks, strokes, dementia and more, including premature deaths.
The most hazardous components of wood smoke are not visible; you don’t have to see smoke to be harmed by it.
Just last month, researchers with the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences published a study linking increased lung cancer risk in women to wood stove and fireplace use. They found evidence of increased risk even when the study subjects only occasionally heated with wood.
Neighbors of wood-burning households can routinely be exposed to air pollution levels that are 100 times higher than what others in the community are breathing, or that official regulatory air monitoring reflects.
There is a widely held belief that because wood is natural, burning it must not be harmful. But this simply isn’t true. We need to have much greater awareness of this significant source of harm.
Links to relevant research studies and other information are available on the website of Doctors and Scientists Against Wood Smoke Pollution (DSAWSP): dsawsp.org.
Ellen Golla, Trinidad
This article appears in Second Chances.
I have multiple neighbour’s smoke harming me each day. I have had to go to the ER. It gets into the home, but it’s even worse outside. We have ben trapped indoors like prisoners for months. This was never a thing years ago. The usage has skyrocketed recently by ignorant people who claim saving costs. They are liars as well. It is rich people burning wood for ‘atmosphere’, not poor people to save money. . The collective ignorance, and lack of care for others is astounding in this day and age, especially in a so called progressive, environmentally friendly community….I am so scared for my health, and that of my small child. It is now wildfires the first half of the year, wood stoves the second half, and no break from breathing in these toxins, all year. In California, how is burning even legal at all? What a joke. Legislatures are worried about ‘offending’ wood burners. Why do we even care about them? Just ban all burning! There is no justification for the harm this is doing. We ban second hand smoke, but wood stoves are worse, and spread much farther, harming more. How can that be allowed??