There has long been controversy around wood-burning stoves - but till more recently it didn't revolve around greenhouse gas emissions, how 'clean' in terms of carbon dioxide wood burning is, or whether they might face a ban in the race to net zero. Previously it was about the pms. The particulate matter.
This element of the issue is one that historical geographer, Fraser MacDonald, dug into a year ago in a very eloquent essay in the London Review of Books, titled Burning Questions: Home fires. Following the introduction of New Build standards that were widely seen, or misconstrued, as auguring a ban, on wood-burning stoves, Dr MacDonald talked about the issue again. "We need," he said, " to separate out two things: CO2 emissions and pm 2.
5. Most of the debate UK-wide and indeed worldwide is about the latter. Why? The CO2 emissions of fuel stoves are probably modest compared to most controllable sources, but pm 2.
5 air pollution really foreshortens life (attributable UK deaths by one estimate were similar to Covid in 2022)." Domestic combustion, he observed, is a primary source of pm 2.5.
"Governments, quite properly, have a responsibility to monitor and improve public health – the health and social care cost of air pollution is estimated to be something like £1.1 billion per year in Scotland." On pm 2.
5 there is some positive news . Dr MacDonald said: "You wouldn’t know it from a lot of the reporting but the long term trend of pm 2.5 has been dramatically downward since .
