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Brian Robertshaw of West Brattleboro, Vermont, worries that his children – a three-year-old daughter and a baby girl – might burn themselves on the family’s wood stove, but he admits that he isn’t too concerned about the health effects of the wood smoke in his home’s air.

 "I trained Tansy to keep a safe distance from the hot fire," says Brian, "and then after Ida was born, I put up a child-gate all the way around the stove to keep her from crawling into it."

Yet, with a wood stove or fireplace in use in a home, children can be exposed to "invisible" indoor air pollutants. Wood and gas fires release tiny particles, which can get lodged in the lungs when inhaled. Fires can also produce harmful gasses. Carbon monoxide, an odorless gas, in high concentrations can kill, while nitrogen oxides damage lungs and trigger asthma attacks. These greenhouse gasses also contribute to environmental degradation by producing acid rain. As a result, children living in wood-burning households experience higher rates of lung inflammation, breathing difficulties, pneumonia, and other respiratory diseases.

As of 1992, however, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has inspected all new wood stove models, certifying only those that adhere to strict emissions standards. These certified wood stoves emit half the particulates as older wood stoves, reported EPA researcher Robert C. McCrillis and other researchers in 1998. And EPA certification specifically limits nitrogen dioxide emissions to safe levels. Stoves older than 1992, however, may not burn wood very cleanly. If you can’t afford to buy a new stove, see How to Build a Safer Fire.

Another way to enjoy the glow of heat while reducing harmful emissions is to burn not wood logs but wood pellets made of sawdust and other lumber byproducts compressed together with natural resins that burn almost completely. This "greener" alternative requires a special stove. Pellet stoves have three motors–an igniter to fire the pellets, a blower to fan the fire, and an augur that pours pellets into the fire. This combination reduces the need to open stove doors to feed fuel to the fire, thereby decreasing the amount of smoke escaping from the stove. However, the motors also require electricity, necessitating a backup battery or generator in case of power outages.

Stoves that burn gas, both liquid propane (LP) and piped in natural gas, reduce emissions even further. There are two recommended types:

• Direct vent gas stoves draw air from outside to oxygenate the fire, and channel smoke back outside.
• B-vent gas stoves draw air from the room, providing it isn’t insulated too well, and channel smoke outside.

Although vent-free stoves purportedly burn exceptionally clean, a 1994 California EPA Indoor Air Quality Guideline recommends against the use of unvented sources, which also includes charcoal grills, hibachis, and portable camping stoves. That’s because, without vents, stoves and grills have nowhere to send pollutants and poisonous gasses but the room in which they are located.

Fireplace inserts increase the efficiency and safety of the hearth by containing the fire behind glass and recirculating warm air. Existing fireplaces can be retrofitted with an insert that permits the burning of wood, propane or gas. Factory-built fireplace inserts come self-sufficient, with their own chimney stacks, and can be installed into existing spaces as well as new homes. However, hearth fires cannot heat large spaces as efficiently as wood stoves. That makes their use more an aesthetic choice – one that should be limited when children are about.

In truth, Brian doesn’t need to worry about indoor air pollution because his wood stove is equipped with a smoke-burning catalyst. Catalysts improve air quality while also increasing a wood stove’s efficiency by incinerating every last bit of available fuel. So, Brian’s main worry these days is charring woolen mittens as they dry on the stove and melting plastic plates left atop the stove by unthinking guests.

Resources:

• Combustion Pollutants in Your Home California Environmental Protection Agency Air Resources Board;Indoor Air Quality Guideline No. 2
• Health Effects of Wood Smoke State of Washington Department of Ecology
• Catalytic Woodstoves HearthNet
• Air Emissions from Residential Heating: The Wood Heating Option Put into Environmental Perspective (PDF) by Robert C. McCrillis et al.; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
• Fireplace Safety Tips Hearth Products Association
• Consult the US Consumer Product Safety Commission for product recalls

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