Though I love a nice wood fire in the winter, I also have family with asthma, and we have reached that point where fires do really need to be severely restricted, one loss of the urban society we truly benefit from, but where one person’s warmth is another’s health risk.
Editorial: Hot air over fireplaces
Today's vote seeks to restrict pollution
Published 12:00 am PDT Thursday, October 25, 2007
If you or your loved ones don't suffer from asthma, heart problems or lung disease, the effort of the Sacramento Air Quality District to curb wood burning on still winter days may seem silly. It isn't. The health data are overwhelming. Microscopic pieces of soot that blow out of fireplaces penetrate deeply into lungs and can enter the bloodstream, aggravating respiratory diseases and, in the worst cases, triggering heart attacks.
Know-nothing, local talk-show gabsters and bloggers have targeted Sacramento Air Quality Management District officials for ridicule lately because officials have proposed banning residential burning on the most polluted days of the winter. Under the rule initially proposed, all burning would have been prohibited for an estimated 23 days between November and February, those days when air pollution is at its worst, when there is no wind and atmospheric conditions hold soot, smoke, dust, metals, nitrates and other dangerous pollutants close to the ground, where people live and breathe.
County supervisors and City Council members on the local air board balked at the district proposal last month because it did not exempt less polluting pellet and wood-burning stoves and fireplace inserts certified by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The staff was instructed to list alternatives.
