A compendium of news and commentary about wood burning collected (mostly) from around North America. If you see a relevant item that doesn't appear here, please post it in the comments section below.

Pollution group wants borough to scale back chimney smoke ordinance
The panel is planning to ask for smaller setbacks and lower smokestack requirements for outdoor wood boilers, which are believed to be some of the biggest polluters in the Fairbanks North Star Borough. In addition, the commission wants the borough administration to write a better description for nuisance. The current description says that no one’s chimney emissions can be “injurious to human life or to property” and the smoke must not “unreasonably interfere with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property.” Machetta called the statement too open-ended.

Talking transportation — Peak oil and the end of life as we know it in Northeast
You think things are bad now? Just wait. We could be inches or minutes away from a global economic crisis that will make the current recession look like fun — the day we realize we’re running out of oil.

At home: With home heating oil at $12 a gallon, people close off rooms in their “McMansions” and huddle in the few remaining spaces they can afford to heat, usually with wood stoves, which are also in short supply. Winter’s gloom is augmented by a constant gray haze of wood smoke.

Office buildings, by law, can heat to no more than 60 degrees in colder months. Sweaters are the new fashion statement (think Jimmy Carter and cardigans in the ’70s).

Scientists and physicians say Outdoor Wood Furnaces are a serious health threat to those who live near them.
Outdoor wood furnaces create emissions different from either fireplaces or indoor wood stoves. . . Environment and Human Health, Inc. (EHHI) has completed an extensive study that measured wood smoke in homes in the vicinity of outdoor wood furnaces. . . EHHI found wood smoke particulate matter in every impacted home to be extreme, and to be high enough to cause illness. A study by the University of Washington showed that 50 to 70 percent of the outdoor levels of wood smoke entered homes that were not burning wood. The EPA did a similar study in Boise, Idaho, and got similar results. The data Environment and Human Health collected show that similar exposures are occurring in Connecticut in non-burning houses in the vicinity of outdoor wood furnaces.