Efficient Wood Stove Campaign | The Sunshine Coast Clean Air Society

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Better for the Environment

Emissions from wood smoke can be reduced - indoors and out - by learning to burn more efficiently and by improving your wood-burning practices. Replacing your existing wood burner with a new-technology appliance that meets EPA and Canadian Standards Association (CSA) emissions standards can help to further reduce the emissions of pollutants by up to 90 percent.

The SCCAS is working to educate people about the serious health hazards of operating old wood stoves and fireplaces that do not meet EPA and CSA standards.

More Convenient to Use

Advanced-combustion wood-burning units produce a more stable fire, so you spend less time fiddling with the controls. Remember the most important rule: Never let the fire smoulder. As long as there is solid wood in the firebox, there should be active flames. Without flames, smoke will escape unburned, reducing efficiency and increasing pollution. With advanced systems, you can achieve a reliable overnight burn while maintaining flaming combustion and still have enough charcoal in the morning to kindle a new fire.

Wood Stove Exchange Program

Starting January 1st, 2010

The Sunshine Coast Clean Air Society in partnership with the BC Lung Association and the Ministry of Health will be offering a wood stove exchange program. This program provides a financial incentive for owners of inefficient, older wood stoves to trade them in for a modern, efficient and clean burning new one. An educational workshop will be offered that will teach participants how to get the most btu's out of their wood, through proper wood drying techniques and wood stove use. This workshop will be free for all participants.

For more information, contact:
Nadi Fleschhut
604.741.9859
nadi@cleanaironthecoast.com

From our blog

Guidelines for Efficient use of Wood-Burning Appliances

A properly installed, correctly used wood-burning appliance should be smoke free. If you see or smell smoke that means you may have a problem. Practice the following guidelines to for an efficient fire, and reduce smoke inside and outside your home.

Upgrade to an efficient, CSA/EPA-approved wood-burning appliance.

* Today's wood-burning appliances burn cleaner and produce less smoke inside and outside your home
* Look for EPA labeling on your wood-burning appliance
* Efficient wood-burning appliances burn less wood, saving you time and money

Burn only dry, well-seasoned wood.

* Properly seasoned wood is darker, has cracks in the end grain, and sounds hollow when smacked against another piece of wood.
* Season wood outdoors through the summer for at least 6 months before burning it.
* Stack wood off the ground, with the top covered.
* Wood burns best when the moisture content is less than 20%. Test wood with a moisture meter before burning to ensure it is dry enough to give a clean, hot fire.

Items You Should Never Burn in Your Appliance

* Never burn household garbage or cardboard. Plastics, foam and the colored ink on magazines, boxes, and wrappers produce harmful chemicals when burned. They may also damage your wood-burning appliance.
* Never burn coated, painted, or pressure-treated wood because it releases toxic chemicals when burned.
* Never burn ocean driftwood, plywood, particle board, or any wood with glue on or in it. They all release toxic chemicals when burned.
* Never burn wet, rotted, diseased, or moldy wood.
* Never burn logs made from wax and sawdust in your wood stove or fireplace insert – they are made for open hearth fireplaces.

Have a certified technician annually inspect and service your appliance.

* A properly installed and maintained wood-burning appliance burns more efficiently, saving you money.
* If you smell smoke in your home then something is wrong. Shut down the appliance and call a certified chimney sweep to inspect the unit.
* Nearly 7 percent of home fires are caused by creosote build up in the chimney. Have your chimney annually cleaned by a WETT certified chimney sweep.

Follow safe wood-burning practices

* Keep all flammable household items—drapes, furniture, newspapers, and books—far away from the appliance.
* Start fires only with newspaper and dry kindling. Never start a fire with gasoline, kerosene, charcoal starter, or a propane torch.
* Build hot fires. A smoldering fire is not a safe or efficient fire.
* Keep the doors of your wood-burning appliance closed unless loading or stoking the live fire. Harmful chemicals, like carbon monoxide, can be released into your home.
* To maintain proper airflow, regularly remove ashes from your wood-burning appliance into a metal container with a cover and store outdoors on a cement or brick slab. You can use the cold ashes in your garden to add minerals and reduce soil acidity.
* Keep a fire extinguisher handy.
* Install and maintain a smoke alarm. Most people lose their lives in house fires due to inhalation of smoke and toxic gases, rather than from burns. Properly installed and maintained smoke alarms in the home are considered one of the best and least expensive means of providing an early warning of a potentially deadly fire.
* Install and maintain a carbon monoxide detector. When wood is not burned completely, the resulting smoke contains a number of chemicals, one of which is carbon monoxide (CO). CO is odorless and colorless. Exposure to CO reduces the blood's ability to carry oxygen. A digital CO detector is recommended for any home using a wood-burning appliance. The detector displays the concentration of CO parts per million (ppm) and makes a warning sound that gets louder as the concentration increases.
Removing one ton of black carbon will have the same effect as removing 2,000 to 3,000 tons of CO2

How bad is wood burning on climate change?

"removing one ton of black carbon will have the same [climate] effect as removing 2,000 to 3,000 tons of CO2," says climatologist Veerabhadran Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

This is one reason why the Clean Air Society is strongly opposed to any unnecessary wood burning.

Source:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/220552/page/3
Clean Air Day Success!

We would like to thank all our volunteers who made it possible for us to have 2 tables available on Clean Air Day, June 3, 2009. One in Gibsons at Sunnybrook Mall and the other at Sechelt at Claytons Mall. The day was a huge success. We now have 30 new members. Way to go team!
Montreal moves to snuff out wood stoves

Here's a new story worth reading:
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/02/04/mtl-wood-stove-ban-0204.html

Montreal is poised to pass one of the strictest laws in the country regarding wood stoves midway through a winter marked by record high levels of winter smog.

The City of Montreal wants to ban citizens from installing a wood stove in new and existing residential homes. Stoves that burn wood pellets will still be permitted.

Winter smog is becoming a major public health problem for Montreal, said Alan DeSousa, the city's executive committee member in charge of sustainable development.

So far this winter, the smog has been so bad that Environment Canada has issued 25 smog warnings, the most of any year on record. Public health authorities say chimney smoke makes up half of the air pollution during the winter in Montreal.

"The health of Montrealers is our priority," said DeSousa in a statement Wednesday.

"With more than 50,000 stoves on our territory, the city is taking action by adopting a law that will contribute to the reduction of the number of premature deaths … [caused by] the quality of air that we breathe."

The Montreal public health department estimates burning a wood stove for nine hours is the equivalent of driving a midsize car for a year, or about 18,000 kilometres of driving.
Drop in U.S. air pollution linked to longer lifespans

Here's one reason why the Clean Air Society exists - to extend the length and quality of lives.

Americans are living longer because the air they breathe is getting cleaner, a new study suggests. The average drop in pollution seen across 51 metropolitan areas between 1980 and 2000 appears to have added nearly five more months to people's lives, according to a study published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Residents of cities that did the best job cleaning up air pollution showed the biggest jump in life span; for example, Pittsburgh's clearer air meant people there could expect to live nearly 10 months longer.

"Here's a situation where we say, 'We think that improving our air quality should improve health and life expectancy,' and so we did it, in many cities more so than others," says lead researcher C. Arden Pope III, Ph.D., of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. "We wait a couple of decades and see if it really helps, and the answer is that it did, and that's good news."

Long-term exposure to dirty air -- specifically, the tiny specks known as fine-particulate air pollution -- shortens lives and contributes to cardiovascular and lung disease. Particulate matter is inhaled almost like a gas and is thought to hike blood pressure, heart attack risk, and the chance of heart disease-related death.

The American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology recommends that heart patients avoid driving for two to three weeks after leaving the hospital to avoid pollution (and stress). Other research has suggested that a nonsmoker living in a polluted city has about the same risk of dying of heart disease as a former smoker. Health.com: 5 ways to keep pollution from harming your heart

Gas and diesel engines, coal-fired plants, steel mills, smelters, refineries, and other industrial processes involving burning at high temperatures produce these particles, which are no bigger than 2.5 microns across -- or about one-fortieth the diameter of a human hair. "Those are the ones that can penetrate deeply into the lungs and cause most of the health problems," says Pope.

The Clean Air Act of 1970 set nationwide air quality standards and motor-vehicle emissions standards for the first time, and the federal government and some states have continued to take steps to tackle air pollution. Health.com: Both indoor and outdoor pollutants linked to heart problems

Thanks to these efforts, U.S. air quality has improved. Pope and his team decided to use U.S. data on fine-particulate matter concentrations and life expectancy from the late 1970s and the late 1990s as a "natural experiment" to determine whether cleaner air had any effect on health.

They plotted pollution data for 1979-1983 against 1978-1982 life expectancies for 217 counties within 51 metropolitan areas around the country. Then they compared 1999-2000 pollution data with 1997-2001 life expectancies. Finally, they looked at how changes in life expectancy related to changes in air pollution for both time periods. Health.com: 10 risk factors for heart disease

Many other factors can boost life expectancy, such as increases in income and education and reductions in smoking prevalence, so the researchers used statistical techniques to control for these and other relevant factors. After this adjustment, they found that the effect of air pollution reduction remained; for every 10 microgram per cubic meter decrease in fine-particulate air pollution, life expectancies rose by about seven months. Pollution levels averaged about 21 micrograms per cubic meter in 1979-1983 and had fallen to an average of 14 micrograms per cubic meter by 1999-2000.

Life expectancy for the corresponding time periods rose from 74 years to 77 years. Pope and his team calculate that reductions in air pollution accounted for as much as 15 percent of the increase in life expectancy. Heath.com: Heart Quiz: What's your real risk?

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/01/21/healthmag.airpollution.lifespan/index.html

SOURCE: CNN
Black Carbon Pollution Emerges As Major Player In Global Warming

Black carbon, a form of particulate air pollution most often produced from biomass burning, cooking with solid fuels and diesel exhaust, has a warming effect in the atmosphere three to four times greater than prevailing estimates, according to scientists in an upcoming review article in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Soot in the higher latitudes of the Earth, where ice is more common, absorbs more of the sun's energy and warmth than an icy, white background. Black carbon, or soot, absorbs sunlight, while lighter colored ice reflects sunlight.

Soot in areas with snow and ice may play an important role in climate change. Also, if snow and ice-covered areas begin melting, the warming effect increases, as the soot becomes more concentrated on the snow surface. "This provides a positive feedback (i.e. warming); as glaciers and ice sheets melt, they tend to get even dirtier," said Dr James Hansen.

Elimination of black carbon, a contributor to global warming and a public health hazard, offers a nearly instant return on investment, the researchers said. Black carbon particles only remain airborne for weeks at most compared to carbon dioxide, which remains in the atmosphere for more than a century. In addition, technology that could substantially reduce black carbon emissions already exists in the form of commercially available products.

Here's some articles on this topic:
Black Carbon Pollution Emerges As Major Player In Global Warming
Black soot and snow:
A warmer combination

Educational videos on woodstoves

Other resources on wood stoves

News on this topic from around North America

High performance technology makes the new generation of wood stoves greener than ever (Lexington Clipper-Herald)

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:36:37 GMT (ARA) - Whenever a "Back to the Future"-type movie or commercial runs, it's always funny to see larger-than-life telephones, computers and even cars. These blast-from-the-past visual cues remind us of the technological advancements we enjoy every day.
Smoke from outdoor wood furnaces burns neighbors (Connecticut Post)

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 05:12:23 GMT The day that someone in your neighborhood decides to install an outdoor wood furnace is the day that you will forever regret. These smoke-belching devices will take away one of your basic rights ---- the right to breath reasonably clean air.
BC BREAKING NEWS : (Kelowna Capital News)

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 02:10:19 GMT others also read... Over the next two months many Central Okanagan residents will help to reduce air pollution and save some money!
Building fireplaces with environmental quality In mind (Wilton Bulletin)

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:08:02 GMT Audubon Greenwich will host a panel of fireplace design experts on Tuesday, Feb. 23, from 7 to 9, aat the Kimberlin Nature Education Center, 613 Riversville Road, Greenwich.
Houseneeds.com Announces Second Annual Warehouse Sale to Coincide with Vermont Tax Free Holiday (PRWeb via Yahoo! News)

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 07:00:00 GMT This year’s Vermont Sales Tax Free Holiday is March 6th and many Vermont businesses are gearing up for the big day. Houseneeds.com is offering their energy efficient home products at their lowest prices of the year and many products also qualify for the Federal Energy Efficient Tax Credit.