Browse through the home style magazines in your newsagent’s or watch Channel 4’s Grand Designs and you will see beautifully decorated living rooms complete with a roaring fire. Wood burning has become very fashionable and, let’s face it, a log fire is cosy.
Natural gas central heating largely banished solid fuel and brought huge improvements in our urban air. For two decades the UK’s official energy statistics said that home wood burning was too small to be quantified, but under the radar it has been making a return. A 2016 government survey found that 7.5% of UK homes burned wood making up 30% of UK particle emissions. In London, one home in 12 burns wood, but this accounts for more than a quarter of the particle pollution produced in the capital. It is no surprise that the mayor of London, Sadiq Kahn, has called for powers to address this problem.
How you burn wood is important. In London, 69% of people who burn wood are doing so in open fires, a practice banned in the capital by the Clean Air Acts of 1956 and 1968. New stoves pollute far less than open fires, but a recent report found that the limits for Ecodesign wood burners allow six times more particle pollution than the exhaust of a modern heavy goods vehicle, equivalent to 18 new diesel cars.
What you burn matters, too. Construction wood contains harmful metals to prevent rot and woodworm. Old painted wood can contain lead. These are emitted in the smoke. Wet wood is more polluting than dry wood, prompting the Defra-backed Ready to Burn labelling scheme.
