Congratulations Portland Oregon! You had the worst air quality in the nation today.
Updates: see Part 2
Oh and thanks for giving my two year old asthma. Awesome. The greenest city in the USA!
[End sarcasm.]
Source: airnow.gov "USG" means unhealthy for sensitive groups. Portland allows 100% unregulated wood burning even when there is an air stagnation warning, like today.
Why do
other cities have
no burn days, but we don't?
More thoughts after the cut...
Did you know?
- You can't just go inside to escape this pollution. Indoor particulate matter from someone else's wood burning reaches 50-70% of outdoor levels. (Even new houses, which are built tighter, typically exchange all of their air with the outside about once per hour (1.0 ACH)).
- Infants' are especially vulnerable. Lung development is stunted and lower respiratory infections are increased from exposure.
- Wood smoke is just as bad for you as second-hand cigarette smoke. Wood stove's particulate matter is measured in grams per hour (typical stoves put out 40-100 grams/hr). A cigarette emits a couple of milligrams, or about 1/10,000th the amount..
- The Great Smog was a similar--but much more severe--event in 1952 London which killed an estimated 12,000 people and led to the Clean Air Act there.
For references to back up these fun facts see the references at the end of
Health Effects of Wood Smoke. Other research is only a google search away.
Our Experience
We love sitting by a warm fire like anyone else--but we've recently rethought wood burning in a dense residential area. The horrible winter air quality here--due to unregulated residential wood burning--is our least favorite part of living in Portland, Oregon. Infants are very sensitive to this sort of pollution and we have a two year old which develops breathing problems in the winter.
In Portland, Oregon, you can burn as dirty as you want even when there is an air stagnation warning, as there is today. The Oregon DEQ told me even the law against burning trash cannot be enforced in practice.
If you like clean air, I recommend you don't buy a house here. You never know when a neighbor will be a very dirty burner. For example, we have a neighbor that moved in shortly after us and heats their circa 1920, uninsulated house, only with wood. We've asked them to please give us a break with mixed results. We have another neighbor, who we've also talked to, who can't seem to burn wood without making a constant plume of opaque smoke. People don't think they should have to change a habit, even if you nicely tell them it is affecting your health. Even if lobbying neighbors worked, however, it is not a practical on a large scale.
Read part 2.
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