Interesting comments (and language) in this Economist article

[neiln]

Tax new stoves and you drive the wrong behaviour.... We all hang on to older stoves that are less efficient and less clean.  So I doubt they will do it.

[Woodworks]

38 minutes ago, Stubby said:

You cant see it as there is nothing to see !

Lets be honest though that isn't entirely true. 

[ostosix]

To be honest, what happens in London I don't give a toss, even if the whole place burnt down, sick of hearing London this, London that. Might as well be a different planet. 

Any folks that pay thousands for a stove install that they use a few times a year will be happy to pay it. I doubt they will acyually bring it in though.

sorry rant over

[Stubby]

9 hours ago, Woodworks said:

Lets be honest though that isn't entirely true. 

When mine has been alight for an hour or so I cant see any visible smoke from the chimney .

[westphalian]

It’s gone out mate

[Woodworks]

16 minutes ago, Stubby said:

When mine has been alight for an hour or so I cant see any visible smoke from the chimney .

Yes but that does not mean it's not giving off the sub 2.5 micrometres particles that all the fuss is about. 

 

 

[Billhook]

The things that really put out black smoke and particulates, such as diesel buses, lorries and older cars would need to be banned first logically.

[Gary Prentice]

31 minutes ago, Billhook said:

The things that really put out black smoke and particulates, such as diesel buses, lorries and older cars would need to be banned first logically.

But to do something about them would be political suicide. A bit like banning cigarettes, recognised as being so harmful it makes sense just to make them illegal but the consequences of doing so are unthinkable.

Edited August 31, 2018 by Gary Prentice

[Billhook]

1 hour ago, Gary Prentice said:

But to do something about them would be political suicide. A bit like banning cigarettes, recognised as being so harmful it makes sense just to make them illegal but the consequences of doing so are unthinkable.

Or addressing human over population with birth control to combat all of the world's problems,  energy conservation, pollution, habitat destruction, global warming etc

[openspaceman]

2 hours ago, Woodworks said:

Yes but that does not mean it's not giving off the sub 2.5 micrometres particles that all the fuss is about. 

 

 

That's an interesting point, my bet would be if you see white /yellow smoke you  are just smouldering with no flaming combustion, black smoke then the fire is well air starved, blue smoke  the fire is quenched or not up to temperature. I'd love to see sampling done if you truly cannot see any smoke but would say it's as clean as you're going to get.

 

Yes there will always be particulates but if you saw that Economist graphic  you will note  there is always a background particulate level that is not attributed and since 1990 this has become more significant as other sources have been controlled (especially look at how agriculture's contribution dropped so dramatically, presumably following the straw burning ban).

 

Consider also that all particulates are not equally toxic, these surveys do not discriminate whether particles are of a more damaging type, like asbestos, infectious spores or containing PAHs, also the risks are not directly proportional to  the concentrations, they go up dramatically if you smoke for instance.

 

Now I accept that breathing in particulates is damaging, I once worked out that over my lifetime I have probably inhaled over 2 grams but I am approaching my biblically allotted span. I almost certainly have loss of lung function, after all I sat behind a dies which emitted blue smke, from glazed bores I suspect)and worked near many bonfires. This is the worry to me about how theses cause and effect are being attributed. premature deaths and Disability-Adjusted Life Year effects are based on a cohort of all who have died up till now. Many of these people will have lived, breathed and existed in industrial pollution from years back, you can see from the graphic cited above that even since 1990 we have made significant improvement and before that we had the clean air act. I hardly ever see dark smoke nowadays and when I do it's often a shady industrial  yard illegally  burning off old tyres etc.