Maine EPA Wants to Remind You That Wood Smoke Is Carcinogenic.

[NNadir]

http://www.maine.gov/dep/air/woodsmoke/woodsmokehome.htm">Maine.gov: Woodsmoke.

...There is a myth that because it is 'natural' wood burning has little impact on health. Another myth is that it is less harmful than other home heating fuels. The information below and on the 'Health Effects of Wood Smoke' page refutes these myths...

...Wood smoke contains harmful chemical substances such as: carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), dioxin, and inhalable particles. Some of the VOCs are irritating, toxic, and/or cancer causing. Toxic air pollutants are a potentially important component of wood smoke. A group of air toxics found in smoke known as polycyclic organic matter includes potential carcinogens such as benzo(a)pyrene.

One of the biggest threats to human health from wood smoke, indoors or outdoors, comes from particle pollution. Particle pollution is emitted from the combustion of any fuel, however on these pages we will focus on particle pollution caused by burning wood. Particle pollution from wood burning is composed of wood tars, soot, and ashes, some of which are harmful or toxic...

Bold, referring to "myths" is mine.

Well, it's a myth one might hold if one doesn't know any science, but if one has a passing familiarity with science, one wouldn't countenance the "myth" at all.

By the way, there's nothing "potential" about the carcinogenicity. One of these days I'll reference a paper from my files, from the medical journal Lancet that shows that many kinds of wood smoke are far more carcinogenic than tobacco smoke.

[jpak]

1. People from New Jersey who brag about smoking up their neighborhood

with their inefficient fireplaces shouldn't be so smug....

:rofl:

[NNadir]

3. I stopped burning all that much wood in my home, as a result of reading the scientific

literature on levoglucans, PAHs, etc.

I propose that New Jersey's heating should all be electrified, using new and existing nuclear plants.

I don't want your secondhand smoke either, kiddie, but being entirely unfamiliar with the contents of the scientific literature, with papers, like say http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VH3-4PPMXW7-4&_user=10&_coverDate=01%2F31%2F2008&_alid=1299545056&_rdoc=3&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_cdi=6055&_sort=r&_docanchor=&view=c&_ct=401&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=6c9b6bcab9071e19275b3a9a0a6883af">Atmospheric Environment Volume 42, Issue 1, January 2008, Pages 101-112, which would indicate to a scientifically literate person - which excludes all the twits who are so concerned about tritium, which harms no one - that PM10 from wood smoke, even in Europe, represents a real threat to health.

Additionally, aerosols have been related to adverse health effects in various studies (e.g., Pierson et al., 1989). Especially the fine particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter o2.5 mm (PM2.5) is of great concern because it can easily enter the human respiratory system. Many studies have provided evidence that ambient PM2.5 concentration strongly correlates with mortality rate (e.g., Dockery et al., 1993; Laden et al., 2006), and that long-term exposure of combustion-related fine particulates increases the risk for cardiopulmonary and lung cancer mortality (Pope et al., 2002). The combustion of wood leads to the emission of nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO) and particulate matter. The latter consists of a high amount of BC and organic compounds, e.g., polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) or humic-like substances (HULIS) (Hoffer et al., 2006; Kochbach et al., 2006).

The bold is mine.

Actually, in the bizarre calculus of the uneducated anti-science anti-nuke crowd, all the deaths from wood smoke in Europe don't add up to a single paranoid fantasy about a death from tritium, none of which have been shown to occur.

As is usually the case, the anti-nuke crowd is obsessed with claiming that only nuclear energy be perfect, and all of the far more dangerous stuff they don't care about, and indeed promote, can kill at will, in as large a number as is possible.

Nuclear energy need not be perfect to be vastly superior to all the deadly stuff - dangerous fossil fuels, wood, the toxic solar industry, and the grease sticks in the sky. It only needs to be vastly superior, which it is.

[jpak]

4. So you just burn *dangerous* natural gas at home in your *upscale* NJ neighborhood

which not a (((yuppie)))) neighborhood addicted to Car Culture and Ambien.

Is this what you want us to believe?

well is it?

:rofl:

[virgogal]

2. Then it's better to smoke than have a wood-burning stove.

Hmmmm !

[skids]

5. For once we agree.

Though well engineered biomass plants can and have been built, most units on a household scale do not burn clean enough to be responsibly used as a primary heat source. The "natural == good" people are off track here.