Wood-burning stoves, the picturesque polluters

By THE DATA TEAM

INTERIOR-DESIGN magazines and television programmes have in recent years fuelled a fashion for wood-burning stoves. About 7.5% of homes in Britain burn wood for ambience or warmth, according to a survey in 2015. By now the share is probably higher, since about 175,000 new stoves are sold each year.

The trouble is that the wholesome-looking burners are big emitters of fine particles, specks of dust and soot measuring less than 2.5 micrometres (0.0025 millimetres) which sink deep into the lungs and pass into the bloodstream, causing respiratory and heart diseases. Britain has made strides in reducing fine-particle pollution from most sources in the past few decades (see chart). But home wood-burning has rocketed, and now accounts for 38% of the particles emitted in Britain, more than twice the amount spewed by vehicles.

Wary of parting voters from the treasured centrepieces of their sitting rooms, the government is treading gently with its clean-air plan. On August 17th it proposed a ban on the sale of coal for home burning, as well as restrictions on the sale of recently felled wood, which is less energy efficient and emits twice as much smoke as the dry sort. But such a ban would apply to less than a fifth of the logs currently tossed into home wood-burners.

Earlier this year ministers also suggested that new stoves should face much stricter limits on emissions. Yet even the stoves that pass this new standard, labelled as eco-friendly, emit three times more particles per hour than a lorry. An article in the British Medical Journal called for a “polluter-pays” tax on new stoves, to equal the associated health costs, which it put at £889 ($1,150) per stove each year in inner London.

The biggest problem is enforcing the rules in the smoke-control zones, such as central London. In theory, residents who use non-compliant stoves or burn the wrong fuel face a £1,000 fine. But unclear guidelines and local authorities’ weak powers of enforcement mean that compliance is largely voluntary. The black smoke will continue to waft from the chimneys of well-to-do homes until wood-burners go back out of fashion.