The council aims to expose the dangers linked to wood burners as they continue to prove popular in Brighton and Hove.
The move comes just over six months after Brighton and Hove News reported that government data showed how “particulate pollution” was slowly declining across Britain as a whole.
But the concentration of particulate matter in the air was spiking above safe levels in several places across the country, with Brighton and Hove among the worst offenders. To read the report, click here.
And at the time Independent councillor Peter Atkinson called on Brighton and Hove City Council to act on the information.
Today (Thursday 12 December) the council said that it was starting a campaign “to raise awareness of the harm being caused by people using wood burners and open fires”.
The council said: “Called the Cosy Killer, the campaign is about letting people know the harmful impact that smoke particles from domestic burning are having on everybody’s health, including those inside the home.
“The campaign is a clear message that burning solid fuels is harmful to us all and a contributing factor to 1 in 20 deaths in people over the age of 30 in Brighton and Hove.
“Solid fuel burning is a significant source of fine particulate pollution, known as PM2.5.
“PM2.5 are fine particles (more than 20 times thinner than a human hair) that can reach the lungs and enter the bloodstream.
“Burning wood or coal can triple the amount of harmful pollutants inside your home. Burning wood in homes produces more small-particle emissions than all road traffic in the UK. Particle pollution can increase your risk of a heart attack, stroke and lung disease.
“It marks the next step in a new approach to improve air quality and tackle the burning of solid fuels in Brighton and Hove.
“Last month, we launched the Brighton and Hove and Sussex Real-Time Air Quality Portal which allows residents to see real-time air quality readings 24 hours a day, seven days a week across the city.”
Labour councillor Tim Rowkins, the council’s cabinet member for net zero and environmental services, said: “This campaign is designed to highlight the dangers of using wood burners and open fires.
“I strongly believe most people who burn at home simply aren’t aware of the harm they’re doing.
“The smoke particles they produce have very damaging impacts on the health of people both inside and outside the home – especially those with chronic lung conditions like asthma.
“We know for some people a wood burner is essential for them to be able to heat but for the vast majority, it’s more of a luxury.
“We’re taking a new approach to burning solid fuels in the city this year, including greater enforcement in our Smoke Control Areas. It’s important we make sure our residents are aware of the health risks and impacts.”
To read more on the council’s website about burning solid fuels in Brighton and Hove, click here.
Would the funds allocated for this campaign not be better spent on the council’s basic duties and responsibilities given the claimed strain on the budget? It’s not as though average life expectancy in the city is going to increase by ten years as a result.
Yet VG3 – which will cause more pollution – is acceptable!
The council are so worried about pollution that they install unneeded bus and cycle lanes and sequence traffic lights to cause traffic to back up on all main roads at peak times, forcing us all to breathe it in every single day.
Full ban needed on wood stoves and open fires. Their use is not acceptable given the evidence and harm they cause to people and the already damaged environment.
1 in 2 will get cancer but people feel it is fine to pump carcinogens into there neighbourhood nightly so they can be cosy. Understand that gas and some electric is also a pollutant (which you are also probably running with your stove) but your wood stove is 400% more than your boiler and is as said pumping pollution in your your neighbours and city. Why would you do that.
We can all do our part – but wait for the hypocritical responses. If you are one of those who need the evidence there are plenty on line for many different sources which will extinguish your excuses.
You’ll probably find that people will take more notice of what you say when you articulate it in sentences that are constructed correctly. Also, try not to use statistically irrelevant, emotive phrases such as ‘1 or 2 will get cancer’.
Proselytising in such a patronising manner rarely gets taken seriously.
Sadly it is not only my patronising manner, that this matter is not taken seriously.
No, I take them seriously and I don’t take you seriously because you’re just ignoring their comment to attack them and possibly even for a disability. you should know you probably have one of those “complete guides to logical fallacies” printed out and stuck on your fridge to make you seem smarter….. Ad hominen is a logical fallacy.
My comments were directed entirely at those posted and the less than satisfactory manner in which they were expressed. The criticism was not about the commenter. That is not an ad hominem.
You would do well to learn from your misunderstanding.
What utter tripe. I bet you are one of those who believed Greta when she said the world was going to end last year.
Absolutely agree. I personally cannot help but feel this is just another attempt at scaremongering where it’s not needed. The powers that be do not want people to be self sufficient. They want us totally reliant on gas and electricity and far too many rely on government statistics and so called scientific reports, which if we are honest are hardly something we can trust
With a Defra approved stove, there’s nothing the council can do about it. Thank god
This is utter cobblers.
Maybe if gas and electric were cheaper (and not bumped up with VAT and “climate taxes”), people would not have to resort to burning wood and coal to keep warm.
Yes, totally agree about energy prices. Sorry state we’re in. Mind you, I should imagine some people are burning wood that’s been treated, varnished, painted etc, so that brings hazards in itself. I’ve seen a few adds where people are looking to off-load their clapped out furniture ect for free, not caring or knowing about the impact this has on people.
It’s not that I refuse to believe that there is a danger… But we have evolved to be around fires… Like it is THE thing that made us human. You may take my… Petrol and diesel cars, but you’ll never take my wood burning stove! Especially when there is a power outage and the boiler and cookers stop working…
Yet again our elected council just steam ahead,moaning about no money for essential services but hey let’s carry on with getting rid of the aquarium roundabout, against every one saying its not a good idea . They now launch this hair brained scheme, god knows what they will do with the i360.
It’s like all elected bodies once in power forget everything your manifesto said, forget what the electorate want just do what you want .
Pleased to read this. I live near a property that is Air bnb’d and Lord knows what they burn but it absolutely stinks – can smell it when the windows are all shut.
The whole of the city ought to be a clean air zone. One absurdity is that all of central Brighton is already in one, but Hove isn’t. Smoke particles do not respect such borders.
As usual there’s some truth in what is being said, but there’s also a lot of unnecessary drama.
People have been cooking on open fires for centuries and many still do, and so it’s weird to suddenly start worrying about smoke inhalation. And if you ever visit an acupuncturist, or someone doing aromatherapy, you’ll find they often light a smokey stick to recreate that autumn smell of bonfires.
The key to using a modern woodburning stove is to use dry and well-seasoned wood, and every log supplier will be aware of that. Your stove should also be well maintained with controlled air intake, to make sure it burns efficiently.
The Defra-approved stoves have a thick plate of metal above the firebox and that allows secondary combustion of smoke as it passes over this plate, meaning what’s left to go up the chimney is pretty clean once the stove has reached its working temperature.
A sign that you are burning dry wood, and efficiently, is that there should be little ash to clear each morning.
For sure, there should be no smell of smoke in the house once a log fire has been lit and the stove doors are closed.
Wonder when ‘in the olden days it was ok’ excuse would be used.
Defra- approved stove are still more polluting than using your boiler. Open fires, wet wood poor maintenance even worse. You are harming your self, family and neighbourhood just as they did in the old days.
You are right candles we burn at home or insense are in the same way very bad for your health but these will only harm you and not be pumped out of your chimney and have an effect on your neighbours health.
You are wrong though to use candles, insense or gas hobs as an excuse to keep polluting.
Tailor, no one is suggesting a return to ‘the olden days’ – where every house had open fires, usually burning coal.
I have friends in Africa who still cook over an open fire – and that’s sometimes their choice, or else an economic necessity – but they don’t live on an over-populated island like we do.
We Europeans live in the modern world, and that includes ‘clean burn’ stoves, pellet burners, and heat pumps. The arguments about which type of heating is truly ‘green’ gets complicated when you look at long term costs, but that discussion is similar to the one about electric cars and their longevity.
I don’t actually have a wood burning stove myself, or a gas boiler, or a gas hob, or a garden fire pit, and I don’t light candles either – but nor do I want to see these things banned. Informed choice is maybe the way to go.
What a sensible and well-balanced comment you have written. Clearly wasted on a local rag’s blog roll!
The statistics are highly emotive – such as will contribute to deaths of 1 in 20 people. You can claim anything with stats. We live in a coastal city with a breeze blowing most of the year – any pollution gets dispersed much more effectively than in somewhere land locked. Pollution is all around us from the plastics in our carpets, TVs, computers etc to the plastic water pipes which supply our homes. It’s impossible to ban everything which MIGHT be unhealthy. Compared to 60 years ago the air is probably the cleanest it’s ever been and the small proportion who choose to use a wood stove are not harming anyone.
I didn’t see Brighton and Hove Council objecting to the huge rubbish incinerator they inflicted on Newhaven and the Ouse Valley to burn the city’s rubbish. That’s burning toxic material on an industrial scale and I’d guess is much more of a contributor to overall air pollution than domestic stoves.
The one next door to me harms me. Along with others in the neighborhood. The old sea breezes argument is garbage. One way or another it hangs around, and where would it go anyway ,but to someone a bit further away. It’s a stupid lifestyle fad that is increasing pollution nationwide. The evidence is clear that even modern eco stoves cause great harm. You may be happy to poison yourself, but why poison others? We don’t accept people smoking in our faces , so how come putting smoke inside and around my home is fine?
Have you ever thought of writing victim statements for people in the courts? I think you’d be very good at it.
The number of people who rush on comment pages to spout nonsense. Just because people used to burn wood does not make it safe. People also used to use asbestos, radium and arsenic widely. The point of progress in public health is to indentify sources of pollution and try to minimise their impact.
Wood burners are certainly not necessary in urban locations. The majority of the people who have them, have perfectly adequate central heating, but choose to have a “cosy fire”. That is the point of the councils campaign. In many cases the people at highest at risk from particulates are the stoves owners and their families.When they open up their woodburners the particulates are spead around their houses.
You illustrate the first point in your comment very well.
The line I have the most trouble with, in this article, is this one:
“The campaign is a clear message that burning solid fuels is harmful to us all and a contributing factor to 1 in 20 deaths in people over the age of 30 in Brighton and Hove…”
The ‘1 in 20 deaths’ figure is alarmist, and only made truthful by the addition of the term ‘contributing factor.’
So what this is actually claiming is that for the deaths of people over 30, in 5% of cases, smoke inhalation is a contributing factor.
(Another ‘contributing factor’ might be them being a fan of eating processed burgers, say from MacDonalds. And did they smoke, or perhaps drive a diesel lorry? Or was it that they took no exercise? )
For that statement to become meaningful in the context of this article, we also need to know how many of those 5% died at a statistically ‘early’ age, and in which cases did they run a woodburning stove?
I’m guessing too, that the three 95 year olds in my family – who all grew up having to light coal fires every day, as their only heating – must have been lucky.
I’m not dissing the discussion, or the idea that we might understand better the dangers of woodburning stoves, but there will be people in our city tonight, trying to heat their homes in the current cold weather, and who will find these council claims to be at odds with their personal experience, and choices.
It was 4 degrees outside as I left for work this morning, and this evening it’s just 11 degrees indoors, in my lounge. If I had a woodburning stove in my flat I’d certainly be lighting it.
My wood burning stove emits less particles than a candle. Today 70% of electricity in the UK came from gas. Most central heating came from gas. Wood is a short-chain carbon cycle. Ga is as we all know a fossil fuel. My wood stove causes less damage than electricity.
Unfortunately we live in a city where most of the building were thrown up by the railway at the turn of the 1910s. Badly insulated temporary buildings that were not intended to still be here 100 years later…
Solutions available:
Bulldoze your house and rebuild it, very expensive
Retrofit proper insulation, very expensive
Heat it using gas or electric heaters, very expensive
Chuck in a wood burner, pretty cheap
Use existing fire places, even cheaper
So I think this is a government issue. Maybe we should all take a hit and have insulation works put onto mortgages by law or solar panels ect, but other than that to moan about it and try to put it in people ‘to do the right thing’ isn’t really a sustainable option