A STUDY by the very respected Royal College of Physicians has warned that wood burning stoves are not only bad for the environment but also your health with them contributing to 40,000 deaths a year!
Many boaters burn wood and wood 'pellets' on their stoves, believing they are both best for the environment and health, but research has discovered that this is the opposite, especially, as many boaters sit by their stoves with the doors wide open basking in the heat.
Effects boaters
Though the research was driven by the trend by householders installing wood burning stoves and it estimated that over 100,000 are being installed every year, the results of this research affect boaters, many of whom burn wood on their stoves.
So now not only do they have the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning from burning solid fuel on their stoves but danger from burning wood, especially in such a confined space as a narrowboat.
Helping the environment
In houses, installing a wood burner is seen as helping the environment, and there are even subsidies from the government to tempt householders, but this is about to change after the results of the research which shows the danger to both the environment and health.
It has been revealed by air quality experts that stoves contribute to an ever increasing cloud of smog that is increasing the risk of cancer, lung disease, heart attack, stroke and even dementia.
Deadly cocktail
Opening the doors of stoves when burning wood, it has been discovered, floods the air with a deadly cocktail of noxious gases and toxic wood smoke particles, including soot PM2.5, that are many times smaller than the human hair but which the experts say can get deep into our lungs. So tiny that it is believed they can penetrate into other organs. It is though that wood burning is now the single largest source of PM2.5.
It has also been proven that smoke from wood burning also contains harmful pollutants such as benzene, formaldehyde, acrolein, nitrogen oxides and a class of chemicals named PAHs.
Advocate the use of wood burners
However there are those who advocate the use of wood burners, such as the Stove Industry Alliance, that argues that when used properly with the doors closed, as fumes are carried up the chimney, and there's no chance of a log rolling out of the grate and on to a carpet, creating a potential fire hazard.
But Dr Gary Fuller, an expert in air quality at King's College London has even compared the toxic, dirty air in today's cities to that of the Fifties and Sixties, when open coal fires were often the only source of heat in most homes, showing that wood smoke is a cocktail of gases and dangerous microscopic particles and worse when the doors are opened to heat the room quicker.
The lesson, if you want to burn wood on your boat's stove—keep the doors firmly closed.