Reasons to Abandon Burning Wood

Following up on yesterdays post, I wanted to point to a presentation given by University of Utah Research Associate Kerry Kelly that is available here and discusses the significant impact of wood burning on pollution in the Salt Lake Valley.  The talk is based on Kelly et al. (2013), published in the Journal of the Air and Waste Management Association.

Here are the key points:

1. Wood smoke (and possibly cooking smoke) is likely the largest direct contributor (i.e., emitted from a source) to PM2.5 on winter days with PM2.5 > 20 ug/m3.  Note that our PM2.5 comes from these direct emissions and from chemical reactions involving other gases generated by combustion (such as nitrogen oxide).  The latter are typically referred to as secondary PM2.5.

2. Wood burning emissions are highly variable depending on their design, operations, and fuel, but they are far filthier than heating with natural gas.

Source: Kelly et al. (2013) presentation

The bottom line is that you can do some serious air quality damage when you burn wood in a stove or fireplace.  Although there is no silver bullet when it comes to fixing our air quality challenges, reducing or eliminating wood burning in the Salt Lake Valley (and possibly elsewhere since there is some exchange of air between the counties) represents low-hanging fruit that can be plucked to improve air quality during wintertime inversions.