The not so hidden consequences of burning wood

By -
As we see neighbour after neighbour receive deliveries of wood for next winter, and some down on the beach with chainsaws cutting logs washed ashore, this image really hits hard.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A personal story about dealing with wood smoke

By -
  After 14 years of fighting air pollution locally generated by neighbours from their wood stoves, fire pits, fireplaces, and open burning, we have sold and moved away from our community on Gabriola Island, British Columbia.   It was the most difficult decision of our lives, and a seemingly impossible one. Choosing between your health and home isn’t fair.   After writing dozens of letters to various levels of government on this issue, presenting to councils, setting up a pollution monitoring network using PurpleAir technology, presenting academic work at conferences, being interviewed more than 50 times by media on the topic, working with a group of wonderful, like-minded people to create a non-profit called the Gabriola Island Clean Air Society, and joining the Board of an international group called Doctors and Scientists Against Wood Smoke Pollution, I am exhausted.   We lost many friends over this battle, incurred significant financial costs, were taunted and shunned, attacked merci
Read more

Your fireplace and wood stove are major drivers of deforestation

By -
Image
If you burn wood to heat your home, you may not realize how many trees are consumed every year by this choice. It's often difficult to see this since most of us have wood delivered in trucks loaded with smaller and sometimes split pieces. On Gabriola Island, our consumption of wood is the equivalent of 545 logging trucks/year of trees, and this consumes 55 Ha (136 acres) of mature forest every year. Much of this wood is imported from woodlots on Vancouver Island. If parked end-to-end, these 545 trucks (21.5m in length) would be 11.75 km long - almost the length of the island. Here's the math and the hyperlinked references to support these calculations. Forests in B.C. are relatively productive compared to other parts of the world.  A Ha of mature forest yields on average 400 cubic meters of wood.   Not all of this wood can be used as firewood but we'll use this number since data on actual amounts of usable wood are difficult to come by. A lower number of usable quantities m
Read more

About Us

By -
The Gabriola Island Clean Air Society is a legally incorporated non-profit society registered in the Province of British Columbia, Canada. Our email address is michaeldmehta@hotmail.com To see our live PurpleAir sensor network click here . Our purposes are: To promote protection of the air shed on Gabriola Island and Vancouver Island region from smoke and other airborne pollutants. To work with other organizations including local, provincial and federal governments to improve air quality by identifying current, emerging and future threats that may compromise public health and/or the environment. To work with organizations and governments to reduce risk from outdoor burning practices, wood smoke from wood burning appliances, and to help develop voluntary initiatives, bylaws, and enforcement recommendations. To perform educational and outreach functions to increase understanding of these threats to air sheds. To explore and develop
Read more