Wood Smoke Kills There Is No Safe Level Of Ambient Smoke

IF Americans would learn the truth about wood smoke and health damage they will stop romanticizing it and we can all travel and live  safely! Camp Fire In A Can Technology is available in all sizes, types and prices. Safe for cooking and smores. NO SMOKE.  Propane stoves and fireplace inserts heat better and cheaper then wood per BTU.

COPD, also known as Emphysema and Chronic Bronchitis is the 4th leading cause of death in the USA.

Research shows there is no safe level of smoke. It all harms health. Research also shows that there is no such thing as clean safe burning techniques. It all produces dangerous particle and chemical emissions.

Fire logs do NOT burn clean and safe. Recent laws were enacted to place a label on them stating they are hazardous to health. They contain petroleum, harmful chemicals that people breathe.

A single stove operating an hour burning ten pounds of wood will generate 4,300 times more carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons than thirty cigarettes.

The inhaled particle from one wood stove is equivalent to the particle pollution emitted from 3,000 gas furnaces producing the same amount of heat per unit.

Breathing smoke from 1 stick of wood is equivalent to smoking up to 16 cigarettes.

Washington State ranks fifth in the nation for the prevalence of asthma. One person dies every fourth day in our state due to asthma-related causes. Wood smoke is often the trigger.

Infants exposed to wood smoke have higher risk of Asthma Diagnosis by age 5. Most who have Asthma now had been exposed to wood smoke early in life.

Childhood asthma is now 1 in every 10 children. Adult Asthma is also increasing dramatically every year.

Lung cancer (even among non-cigarette smokers) is the hardest to treat, hard to diagnose early and has the lowest/shortest survival rate among all cancers. Tobacco use has dropped, and smoking is banned in public places, but Lung Cancer is the number one cause of cancer death in the USA. Lung cancer kills more women then cervical and breast combined. Wood smoke air pollution is one of the causes for the increase.

Signs of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), an inflammatory disease state associated with breathing difficulty and sputum, have been found in Egyptian mummies and in a 1,600-year-old Alaskan mummy. Notes one researcher, “COPD secondary to exposure to open wood fires is still an important cause of COPD in many countries, and probably has been a cause of COPD ever since fire was introduced for cooking, heating and recreating.”

In the Western world, we tend to romanticize ancient practices, including burning wood. However, there is nothing romantic about hacking up mucus, wheezing, and being out of breath. People in developing countries in Asia, South America, and Africa who rely on burning even today continue to develop COPD at alarming rates.

When smoke levels go up so do deaths, expensive prescription drug use, emergency room visits, hospitalizations. We all pay higher medical costs and insurance premiums because of wood smoke.

80% of the air pollution in many locations isn't industry or traffic.  It is wood smoke from residential indoor and outdoor wood burning.

Smoke stresses the immune system making it harder to prevent or recover from any disease; from the common cold to Cancer.

Wood smoke particles are tiny they seep into houses through closed doors, windows, light fixtures, under baseboards, wall plugs, any small crack. Furnace and exhaust fans pull smoke into homes.  Furnace filters, weather-stripping, insulation doesn’t stop smoke. A recent study shows that wood smoke pollution indoors can reach up to 70 percent of the outside pollution level in homes which do not burn wood. Neighbors of wood burners breathe smoky air. Schools, hospitals, no public place can keep out wood smoke.

Wood smoke chemicals and particulates can stay near the ground for up to three weeks and can travel up to 700 miles from the source. It can be in the air harming health even when the smell isn’t easily discernible.

Burning two cords of wood produces the same amount of mutagenic particles as: Driving 13 gasoline powered cars 10,000 miles each at 20 miles/gallon or driving 2 diesel powered cars 10,000 miles each @ 30 miles/gallon. These figures indicate the worst contribution that an individual makes to the mutagenicity of the air is using a wood stove for heating.

Free radicals from wood smoke are chemically active for twenty minutes; tobacco smoke radicals are chemically active for thirty seconds. Wood smoke attacks our body’s cells up to forty times longer then tobacco smoke.

Most neighborhoods and public places are smoky most of the time, not just during burn bans. When your home, yard or public place (schools, day care, nursing home, stores, church, library etc.) is smoky from wood burning you need to contact your regional EPA and local Clean Air Agency's.  Also contact your County Commissioners and city counsel members. Don’t just contact once but every time you are breathing smoke filled air. You can also call 911. They gather statistics concerning smoke events. Write your state and federal politicians and tell them you want them to pass a law making all forms of indoor and outdoor wood burning illegal to clean our air, reduce premature deaths, reduce medical costs.

This creates a record of where and how often our air is smoky to help identify high problem areas. The more information they receive about our air quality problems the better choices they can make that will protect our health to reduce medical costs, health problems and insurance premiums. Bad air costs all of us!

Tens of thousands are harmed and many die every year from breathing their neighbor’s wood smoke. Go to http://burningissues.org and read the scientific and medical research concerning the serious health consequences of breathing carbon soot, particulates and toxic chemicals in wood smoke. Fast Facts http://burningissues.org/car-www/education/simple-facts.htm    www.familiesforcleanair.org