Hearths on fire: UK residents incensed by pollution from wood burners
If you’re looking to perfect your rural idyll, you can’t go wrong with a wood burner. A mainstay of glamorous Instagram “cottagecore” accounts and Airbnb listings with a cachet somewhere between an Aga and a yurt, they produce a mood of peace and warmth that glows as softly as their embers.
But lately, some of their owners have ascended the temperature scale from cosy to hot and bothered – and so have their neighbours.
With the sale of smoky wet wood and bags of house coal banned from 1 May, two government reports this week painted a damning picture of domestic wood burning’s contribution to small particle air pollution. They suggested that in 2019, closed and open fires were now responsible for 38% of pollution particles below 2.5 microns in size (PM2.5) – and, in a separate survey, found that just 8% of the population was responsible. Dry wood and solid fuels are much less polluting.
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