Two days before Christmas I stood at the kitchen window in Gateshead and watched the neighbours knock a huge, gaping hole through their living-room wall. Ensuite bathroom? DIY repairs gone wrong? Then a metal flue went up. Santa was coming down a new wood-burner this Christmas.
We’re in the middle of a wood-burning revolution. Our neighbours are one of 175,000 households who are installing a log-burning stove every year — five times more than in 2007. The nostalgic wood-burning stove is now a totem of suburban middle-class privilege. Even the vocal vegan George Monbiot, one of the country’s leading environmentalists, published an astonishing mea culpa in The Guardian last week, admitting he owned not one but three in his low-emissions house in Wales.
“I might have been commissioning ecological destruction,” lamented the 59-year-old environmentalist and author of Heat: How We Can Stop the Planet Burning. “Even fossil fuels, terrible as their impact is, are less damaging than the public health disaster to which I contributed,” Monbiot says. He now wishes he’d installed a gas boiler instead.
But is Monbiot right to self-flagellate? In short, yes. Wood and coal-burning stoves are the single biggest source of air pollution in the country — 17 per cent — outstripping road traffic and construction. A new “ecodesign” wood-burner emits 750 times more particulate matter (PM) than an HGV lorry. The small particles called PM2.5 (those less than 2.5 micrometers in width) are the most concerning, according to John Hurst, professor of respiratory medicine at UCL, as they are just the right size to be breathed deep into the lung. “There are toxins too, such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide,” he says.
Although these toxic airborne particles affect us all, “those with the highest exposure and therefore most at risk are those who own and use a stove”. Opening and closing the burner door lets out millions of toxic particles into your living room. Air pollution in the UK is responsible for an estimated 28,000 to 36,000 deaths a year. Unsurprisingly, Hurst does not own a wood-burner.
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These stoves can fan the flames of respiratory conditions — as Monbiot found when he opened the door to refuel: “I found that the stoves ... made me cough, and seemed to exacerbate my asthma. Worse, when I shut down a stove to trickle some heat through the house at night, the chimney released a cloud of black smoke and soot.”
Hurst claims they can also cause chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — in other words, lung disease — commonly caused by smoking. But replacing a new boiler is an expensive misery, and “I’m installing a new air source heat pump, darling” just doesn’t have the same romance to it as the giddy arrival of a rustic cast-iron log-burner. So you can see why thousands, faced with mounting energy bills, have given in to temptation and chosen a flue instead. The installation cost is about £3,000 — roughly the same as for an air source heat pump, which attracts a £5,000 government grant. They are about 13 per cent cheaper than gas central heating. At worst they’re a fun toy that costs a little more than a hot tub (one of the most recent must-have domestic accessories) and at best they pay for themselves after a few years.
However, running costs are rising. Most of what we burn comes from Russia and the Baltic states. Consequently, the price of firewood has skyrocketed throughout 2022 and is up by 50 per cent on last winter (wood now costs £9 a bag in Waitrose). In August the Guild of Master Chimney Sweeps predicted a shortage of firewood as more people turned to logs to heat their homes.
Fire fans say the dangers are overblown. The UK’s PM air pollution is at its lowest since records began in the 1970s. New rules introduced in January 2022 as part of the government’s clean air strategy have placed limits on what you can burn (basically no wet wood, scrap or black coal) and all fuels have to have the certified “Ready to burn” sticker. All new wood-burners have to meet the ecodesign standard, which means they emit significantly fewer particles.
Wood-burners are not the only harmful emitters in homes, either: plastic containers cooked in the microwave and paraffin-scented candles that emit carcinogens are other offenders. But if the guilt is getting to you and you don’t feel the cold too badly, fire up the Apple TV, download Ultimate Fireplace HD and breathe a deep, particle-free sigh of relief.
