As Cold Weather Approaches Consider Safe Heating Options

Advice on Home Heating from The American Lung Association

(September 23, 2009)—

Now that the cold weather is nearly here, it’s time to think about home heating and how your system may be hazardous to your health and the health of your neighbors. The American Lung Association offers some tips for those who burn wood to reduce harmful emissions from your outdoor wood boilers, fireplace or woodstoves:

  • Use the cleanest technology available. All woodstoves manufactured after the late 1980s must meet U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-certified standards. These woodstoves give off less pollution, need less fuel, and need cleaning less often than older, non-certified woodstoves. If you have an outdoor wood boiler, especially a non-certified one, consider replacing it. 
  • Burn only clean, dry, seasoned hardwood. Wet wood does not burn well, and produces more smoke. Soft woods like pine produce more emissions and deposits inside your chimney. 
  • Never burn painted or treated wood, trash or colored paper, which give off harmful chemicals and more smoke as they burn. 
  • In New England, wood burning from outdoor wood boilers, fireplaces and woodstoves is a large source of particulate matter air pollution. In some localities, wood-burning equipment has been identified as the source of 80 percent or more of all fine particulates during the winter months. Research has shown that fine particulates contribute to health problems including chronic lung conditions

Fireplaces, woodstoves, and even wood pellet combustors and EPA-certified woodstoves, produce orders of magnitude more particulate matter than well-tuned oil or gas devices producing equivalent heat. Non-certified outdoor wood boilers (OWBs) emit at least 20 times more emissions than the current generation of EPA-certified woodstoves. If operated improperly, used to burn trash or poorly maintained, these devices routinely produce several times more air pollutants than when used as designed. 

In addition to particulate matter, wood smoke emissions contain carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, hydrochloric acid, and formaldehyde; and chemicals known or suspected to be carcinogens, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and dioxin.

According to the EPA, wood smoke can cause coughs, headaches and eye and throat irritation in otherwise healthy people. Wood smoke can depress the immune system and damage the layers of cells in the lungs that protect and cleanse the airways. It interferes with normal lung development in infants and children. For vulnerable populations such as people with asthma, chronic respiratory and heart disease, even short exposure to wood smoke can be dangerous. 

Wood smoke exposure can also be linked directly with increased risks of school absenteeism, emergency room visits and hospitalizations for cardiopulmonary conditions and premature death.

For more information about how you can keep the air you breathe clean, call the American Lung Association at 1-800-LUNG USA or visit lungne.org.