Biomass Combustion: Harmful on any Scale

- by Cathy Baiton, Only Clean Air

In the same way that indus­tri­al bio­mass com­bus­tion can seri­ous­ly jeop­ar­dize pub­lic health and the envi­ron­ment in com­mu­ni­ties, res­i­den­tial and small­er-scale com­mer­cial bio­mass burn­ing also have adverse impacts on health and air qual­i­ty in neighborhoods.

In many cities and towns, increased wood burn­ing, both indoor and out­door, has become a poten­tial­ly year-round source of urban and semi-rur­al air pol­lu­tion, whether from high­ly pol­lut­ing out­door wood boil­ers, need­less “recre­ation­al” out­door burn­ing in warmer sea­sons, or avoid­able fire­place or wood stove smoke in cool­er months.

Res­i­den­tial smoke­stacks have even few­er pol­lu­tion con­trols than indus­tri­al tech­nolo­gies, and peo­ple are exposed so direct­ly in the con­fines of an urban neigh­bor­hood, where smoke par­ti­cles can be trapped between trees, build­ings, and oth­er struc­tures and can seep eas­i­ly into near­by hous­es, even through closed win­dows and doors. Stud­ies have found that as much as 70 per­cent of out­door smoke pol­lu­tion can enter sur­round­ing homes, pos­ing health risks to neigh­bors. Indoors, par­ti­cle con­cen­tra­tions can build to lev­els that are dan­ger­ous­ly high.

Julie Bamonte Bur­go, a clean air activist in Pitts­burgh, Penn­syl­va­nia, notes that, “In Alleghe­ny Coun­ty, wood burn­ing smoke accounts for one third of our cit­i­zens’ pol­lu­tion com­plaints,” and points to the great need in her own and oth­er areas for an ongo­ing cam­paign aimed at increased pub­lic aware­ness of the health effects of wood smoke, and of its link to high­er rates of heart attacks, strokes, asth­ma and oth­er lung dis­eases, hos­pi­tal admis­sions, and even ear­ly deaths. Julie recalls how at one time her family’s home, due to neigh­bor­hood smoke pol­lu­tion, “was like a gas cham­ber, it was so bad; even with all the plas­tic on the doors and puri­fiers run­ning … the smoke would just build up in our house.”

While infants, chil­dren, expec­tant moth­ers, the elder­ly, or peo­ple with aller­gies, asth­ma, or oth­er health con­cerns are at a spe­cial risk to even low lev­els of neigh­bor­hood wood smoke, no amount of smoke expo­sure can be con­sid­ered safe for any­one. The abil­i­ty of even healthy peo­ple to safe­ly enjoy out­door activ­i­ty is also lim­it­ed by the pres­ence of any smoke pol­lu­tion. In fact, the World Health Organization’s Inter­na­tion­al Agency for­Re­search on Can­cer (IARC) now clas­si­fies par­tic­u­late mat­ter in out­door air pol­lu­tion as a Group 1 human car­cino­gen — plac­ing PM in the same cat­e­go­ry as oth­er can­cer-caus­ing agents like asbestos and tobac­co smoke.

Accord­ing to the Amer­i­can Lung Asso­ci­a­tion, wood heat­ing is the great­est res­i­den­tial source of par­tic­u­late mat­ter in the Unit­ed States — and it is Canada’s largest sin­gle source of par­ti­cle pol­lu­tion, accord­ing to Envi­ron­ment Cana­da. That the minor­i­ty of homes heat­ed with wood con­tributes such a large por­tion of PM in both coun­tries helps to indi­cate wood burning’s poten­tial­ly neg­a­tive impacts in res­i­den­tial areas, and gives a sense of why even one wood burn­ing appli­ance can degrade the air qual­i­ty of an entire neigh­bor­hood, as the Cal­i­for­nia Air Resources Board has found. When even two or more new wood stoves are used in a res­i­den­tial area, the harm­ful pol­lu­tion is mul­ti­plied. Even in areas that have good over­all air qual­i­ty mon­i­tor read­ings, some peo­ple can still expe­ri­ence very unhealthy air if they live or work near local­ized sources of com­mer­cial or res­i­den­tial wood burn­ing emissions.

A 1999–2002 Envi­ron­ment Cana­da study found that, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the win­ter wood-heat­ing sea­son, con­cen­tra­tions of PM 2.5 and pol­lu­tants like diox­ins and furans and poly­cyclic aro­mat­ic hydro­car­bons (PAHs) were much high­er in a res­i­den­tial area impact­ed by wood burn­ing than in down­town Mon­tre­al — even with all of the heavy traf­fic there — with con­cen­tra­tions being high­est dur­ing win­ter nights and on week­ends. The PAH pol­lu­tion lev­els in the smoke-impact­ed sub­ur­ban neigh­bor­hoods mea­sured twice as high as those down­town; the PM 2.5 pol­lu­tion was ten per­cent high­er and more; and in the wood-burn­ing sub­ur­ban neigh­bor­hood, there were 1.7 times as many diox­ins and furans than in down­town Mon­tre­al. Anoth­er 2007 study found that in a wood-burn­ing neigh­bor­hood east of the city, there were up to five times as many days of poor air qual­i­ty than were mea­sured downtown.

In the years since the ear­li­er study, numer­ous wood stove exchanges in Cana­da, the US, and beyond, have replaced old­er wood stoves with new­er ones — with lit­tle or no real improve­ment in air qual­i­ty. Many of these stove exchanges have been endorsed by health and clean air orga­ni­za­tions that could — and real­ly should — instead be lead­ing the way in efforts to tran­si­tion away from dirty ener­gy sources includ­ing wood com­bus­tion. In British Colum­bia, where many such exchanges have tak­en place, theto­tal provin­cial emis­sions of PM 2.5 from wood heat­ing has not decreased. Rather, the frac­tion­al con­tri­bu­tion was larg­er in 2012 than it was in 2003.

New wood stoves, as the Que­bec Lung Asso­ci­a­tion has argued vig­or­ous­ly, are no answer to the prob­lem of res­i­den­tial smoke pol­lu­tion. Last year the City of Mon­tre­al, which in 2009 banned new instal­la­tions of wood stoves, announced plans to pro­hib­it the use of exist­ing wood burn­ing stoves and fire­places by the end of 2020. This plan sets a high stan­dard that would ben­e­fit air qual­i­ty and pub­lic health in any com­mu­ni­ty. It also reflects the need for gov­ern­ment lead­ers to con­sid­er a key rec­om­men­da­tion of a 2011 UN report which rec­om­mend­ed phas­ing out tra­di­tion­al wood burn­ing stoves in wealthy nations to help reduce glob­al emis­sions of cli­mate-forc­ing pol­lu­tants includ­ing black car­bon; that report demon­strat­ed that wood burn­ing, along with diesel vehi­cles, is a major source of black car­bon in indus­tri­al­ized countries.

Bill Lewin, a British Colum­bia res­i­dent whose fam­i­ly has suf­fered due toon­go­ing smoke from an “EPA cer­ti­fied” stove, wrote pre­vi­ous­ly to his province’s Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter about the pol­lu­tion that result­ed in his com­mu­ni­ty after some res­i­dents had cho­sen to heat with wood “because of the false claims of health depart­ments, gov­ern­ment agen­cies, and the wood burn­ing indus­try, which claim that the new stoves burn clean­ly. Unfor­tu­nate­ly for us,” Bill explains in the let­ter he has shared for the pur­pose of this arti­cle, “this has not proved to be the case.” Bill’s let­ter con­tin­ues: “I have con­tact­ed many author­i­ties to help us — but to no avail. As a mat­ter of fact, what hap­pens is one agency or per­son says to con­tact anoth­er agency or per­son, and it just goes round and round in circles.”

Like many vic­tims of res­i­den­tial bio­mass pol­lu­tion, Bill and his fam­i­ly have found that a lack of aware­ness among pub­lic offi­cials is a frus­trat­ing stum­bling block to progress and to urgent­ly-need­ed relief from tox­ic smoke. For the past sev­er­al years, the health of his fam­i­ly and his neigh­bor­hood has been placed at risk, and yet, as Bill’s let­ter states, the prob­lem has been treat­ed as “a non-issue” by author­i­ties. After con­tact­ing four law firms, Bill was informed by one of them that “if they were to take on our case it would cost $25,000 just to get it off the ground — with no guar­an­tee that the judge was not a wood burn­er him­self. Where,” Bill’s let­ter asks, “is our right to breathe?”

Why should any sec­tor of the bio­mass ener­gy indus­try be per­mit­ted to place busi­ness inter­ests above the health and well-being of indi­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies, and com­mu­ni­ties — often while being giv­en gov­ern­ment incen­tives and fund­ing? Increased pol­lu­tion prob­lems fol­low­ing the rise in wood heat­ing that began about two decades ago, seem to have demon­strat­ed that burn­ing wood for ener­gy with­in the con­fines of close­ly-packed, urban neigh­bor­hoods has been an exper­i­ment that has failed miserably.

Yet gov­ern­ment-sup­port­ed, so-called “Burn Wise” (EPA) or “Burn ItS­mart” (Envi­ron­ment Cana­da) pro­grams enable the res­i­den­tial bio­mass indus­try to per­sist in its pro­mo­tion of the ulti­mate­ly unat­tain­able goal of “effi­cient, clean wood burn­ing,” in a way that seems to par­al­lel the indus­tri­al bio­mass industry’s con­tin­ued pro­mo­tion of the idea of “bio­mass done right” in “small­er and more ener­gy-effi­cient” facil­i­ties. It is sim­ply not pos­si­ble to burn wood clean­ly, and yet bio­mass plants keep being built, threat­en­ing the health of com­mu­ni­ties and forests, while in neigh­bor­hoods, the con­tin­ued sale and instal­la­tion of wood burn­ing appli­ances keeps putting the health of peo­ple at risk.

Rather than chal­lenge this prob­lem­at­ic pat­tern, main­stream media sources appear to gen­er­al­ly accept the notion of bio­mass burn­ing as “green ener­gy,” and often erro­neous­ly describe var­i­ous forms of bio­mass burn­ing in the same pos­i­tive light as clean, renew­able ener­gy sources — even though these dif­fer entire­ly from bio­mass by being emis­sions-free. Much of the gen­er­al pub­lic and, all too often, pub­lic offi­cials and deci­sion mak­ers, are not ful­ly informed about the health impacts of bio­mass burn­ing and the rea­sons why it is not the “clean, green, car­bon-neu­tral” solu­tion that both the res­i­den­tial and indus­tri­al bio­mass indus­tries have claimed.

In its Pub­lic Pol­i­cy State­ment on Ener­gy, the Amer­i­can Lung Asso­ci­a­tion rec­om­mends that wher­ev­er pos­si­ble, “Indi­vid­u­als should avoid burn­ing wood” due to the health haz­ards of smoke pol­lu­tion. In its pol­i­cy state­ment on bio­mass, the Amer­i­can Lung Asso­ci­a­tion of New Eng­land affirms that the issue of peo­ple being impact­ed by tres­pass­ing bio­masssmoke must be tak­en more seri­ous­ly by author­i­ties, and asserts in its Bio­mass Posi­tion State­ment (2009) that, “as in the area of sec­ond­hand tobac­co smoke, the right to breathe healthy air is pri­ma­ry. It super­sedes any alleged ‘right’ to burn wood.”

From this per­spec­tive, both small-scale res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial bio­mass pol­lu­tion and indus­tri­al bio­mass pol­lu­tion are issues of envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice. For the same essen­tial rea­sons that waste incin­er­a­tors and wood-burn­ing pow­er plants should not be allowed to com­pro­mise pub­lic well­ness and the health of ecosys­tems, it is equal­ly nec­es­sary for res­i­dents of all com­mu­ni­ties to have full legal pro­tec­tion from the harm­ful impacts of wood burn­ing pol­lu­tion in res­i­den­tial environments. 

Bio­mass burn­ing is harm­ful on any scale — and what is urgent­ly need­ed is a strong com­mit­ment by all lev­els of gov­ern­ment to sup­port and invest in renew­able, non-com­bustible ener­gy sources that are tru­ly clean, along with improved pub­lic poli­cies that will pro­vide peo­ple with full pro­tec­tion from all forms of bio­mass pol­lu­tion and will help to ensure everyone’s right to breathe clean air.

Peo­ple every­where deserve the right to live in com­mu­ni­ties that are bio­mass smoke-free, where all have equal access to clean air for bet­ter health, now and into a more sus­tain­able future.