Today’s old beloved item in danger of serious bannination: Wood fires.
San Francisco is debating a measure to ban wood-burning fireplaces, and you can expect a discussion on the topic here as well. I doubt the city will ban fireplaces anytime soon – it would be virtually unenforceable, unless you want to the police to take their eyes off the street and spend their shifts examining chimneys or taking tips from tattle-tale neighbors. You’ll probably see incremental regulations that forbid fireplaces in new construction, for example. You might even see city assistance upgrading fireplaces to gas inserts, or rebates from the utilities.
What you won’t see is great public outcry if the anti-fireplace movement phrases their argument with dire hectoring screeds that make it sound like Duraflame logs belch out Zyklon-B.
Let me offer a suggestion. A good approach: fireplaces are an avoidable source of air pollution, and should be gradually phased out. A bad approach: FIREPLACES KILL PEOPLE AND CAUSE AUTISM.
Here’s an example from today’s opinion page – and I should not that all that follows is your host’s opinion as well. It’s a frank and open exchange of views, as they say in the diplomatic circles. Anyway. Says the author: “We’re snuffing secondhand tobacco smoke, but we continue to romanticize recreational wood burning – a hazard all its own.” If that didn’t strike sufficient terror into your heart, read on: “One big source of air pollution – as deadly as vehicle exhaust, and with many of the same toxicants as cigarette smoke – is wood smoke.”
I have different standards for “Deadly.” A whiff of vehicle exhaust: not deadly. A whiff of chlorine gas: deadly.
You may not realize you are required to inhale deadly smoke, but you are:
“All citizens are forced to breathe outdoor air that smells of smoke in many neighborhoods, night and day, in all seasons.
“There is so much smoke, either faint or heavy, that many hardly notice it anymore. But wood smoke is there, heavy in most neighborhoods at night or around our many wood-fired restaurants, if you stop to notice.
“How did this happen in a city such as Minneapolis, which has long been focused on improving air quality for the health of its citizens?”
I don’t know. I do know that the air quality index in the Twin Cities is 22 right now, on a scale of 1 to 300. It’s pretty clean. Take a look back at the old photos of Minneapolis in the 40s and 50s; everything was covered in soot. The white terra-cotta-clad Medical Arts Building looked like your teeth after you’d eaten a pound of licorice. It's better now. But of course it's not perfect.
After a recitation of the deadly power of woodsmoke, we get to this:
“Why, then, do people continue to burn? First, because they don't know how harmful it is. Second, because it is strongly promoted by the hearth and home industry.”
Yes, you’ve been seduced by Big Wood and the mind-blinding promotions of the all-powerful hearth industry. It has nothing to do with your own enjoyment of the fire, the aroma, the crackle and snap of the flames, the emotive ancestral connection with the first invention to set us apart from the animals. The beasts fled from fire. We mastered it! We held it aloft and pierced the dark! We -
Sorry, I was seduced by the usual propaganda from Big Anthropology. Here’s the final reason why we burn:
“And third, because burning wood is an addiction.”
If that’s the case – and I have no doubt it’s true, since people wouldn’t throw around a clinical term like that without hard science to back it up – then it’s a curiously non-addictive addiction. I probably burn four fires a year – Thanksgiving, Christmas, the occasional dinner party. Which leads me to the Obligatory Disclaimer: I actually prefer a gas fire. It lacks the psychological je ne sais quoi of a real fire, but it heats up the room better, and you don’t have to clean up the ashes. (Not that I ever do.) It works with a remote, too, and there’s nothing like using a remote to turn on a fire that makes you feel all modern and special.
The author’s group, Take Back the Air, is also opposed to scented laundry products - one of the "top 3 neighborhood air polluters" - charcoal grills, and “fragrances.” They would also like you to stop using essential oils to make the house smell nice. Fireplaces, you suspect, are just the start.
Incidentally, the author is a realtor, and according to her page, is currently representing the sale of a house with a wood burning fireplace. To be fair, the listing’s picture shows candles in the fireplace.
Hope they’re not scented.
Agree? Disagree? Is there middle ground here? Discuss.
Whatever...
Can we start with banning lawn-mowing? I'm severely allergic to grass, so the cut grass smell is NOT a pleasant smell to me... And, the exhaust from those lawn mowers has GOT to be contributing to air pollution somehow... And isn't it healthier for the environment to allow grass to grow as it pleases???
(I'm joking! Don't flame me!! Oh, wait, you can't flame me because that's polluting the air. ha ha)
I'll agree to banning fireplaces as soon as it's free to heat my home by other means AND it's proven that those other means don't pollute the environment any more than wood burning does. I know many, many people who use fireplaces or wood-burning stoves to keep heating costs down in the winter.