The end of the cosy open fire?
Discussion
DonkeyApple said:
Robertj21a said:
DonkeyApple said:
dickymint said:
I fail to understand your logic on this 
The logic is that this is about the damage done by particulate matter. Obviously if there are very few people in an area then the risk is practically irrelevant in contrast to high population density areas. Ie burning wood and coal does damage in urban areas whereas in the countryside with its low density it’s pretty irrelevant. 
Why was the 1956 clean air act necessary?
We all pretty much understand that the smoke from domestic fires neither falls immediately to the ground where it stays stuck fast forever and not does it blow away to China and cause their smog.
We also all fully appreciate that if there is no one present to breath in the PM2.5 waste then it isn’t a relevant human toxin. And that if the volume in the air is not high then it also represents no health risk to humans.
However, just putting this aside, the greater danger of our trend towards hating and fearing PM2.5 and investing tax payer money in waging war against the evil PM2.5 is that absolutely no one is discussing the differences between the different types of PM2.5 some of which are almost benign while others are particularly dangerous.
So, a little lesson for us all regarding PM2.5. PM2.5 can be harmful to us because it is the correct size to get stuck in the lung alveoli. The risks there are two fold, firstly over time the alveoli can become clogged so your ability to take in oxygen diminishes. But the lungs are really efficient at cleaning out the alveoli via mucus production and so you do need prolonged, repeated and quite heavy exposure. Think of the hacking coughs etc prior to the clean air act.
The real danger of PM2.5 is actually the fact that it can deliver very serious toxins direct into our body. Toxins which our bodies cannot dispose of and instead retain. These toxins build up and cause serious health issues. Think here of previous similar issues such as DDT which built up in animal fats or lead, mercury or cadmium poisoning which traps in the blood and attacks the brain.
Now, PM2.5 refers to the size. It’s a size that we know our lungs are susceptible to trapping. But the two absolutely crucial criteria that define its toxicity are its shape and what toxins it is carrying. These two factors are absolutely critical in determining whether a PM2.5 particle is toxic to us or irrelevant and absolutely no one is discussing the subject at this level but it is vital to do so or we just fall into a mantra born of ignorance.
The type of PM2.5 we are specifically talking about in this thread is flyash. Flyash toxicity to humans is defined by its shape and the toxins it carries. A perfectly spherical partical of flyash is firstly processed by our lungs really efficiently and secondly has a smooth surface so it simply cannot hold any relevant levels of toxins and if it emanates from a source that doesn’t contain these toxins then it won’t have them anyway. These spherical flyashes emanate from high temperature burning of clean substances. In order for them to be a serious health issue a human needs to be breathing them in at a higher rate than the body can get rid of them. This was the core issue of the last century and the reason for the clean air act etc.
The second type of flyash is the real baddie. It is produced at lower burning temperatures so doesn’t form as a spherical, smooth particle but as a nasty, jagged little b
d. This means that it jams into our alveoli and we struggle to get rid of it. Think of it as a ninja throwing star wedged into a large piece of foam. It doesn’t want to come out. At the same time it has enormous surface area so it has the capacity to store huge amounts of toxins and subsequently deliver them into our blood stream. So when burning stuff we need a high enough temperature to form spherical flyash and we don’t want to use a fuel that contains high levels of toxins.
Here is the thing, damp coal and wet wood does not burn at a high enough temperature to avoid high surface area flyash. Dry coal and seasoned wood in an efficient burner does. We don’t want people burning wet fuels or using inefficient burners. But also equally importantly, wood contains pretty low levels of toxins, it can vary depending on where the trees grew but in the UK we haven’t had heavy industry for a long time and it tended not to be located directly where the trees were etc. I wouldn’t particularly want to burn a London Plain tree though but then there just aren’t enough of such trees to make any impact. Our domestic coal is also incredibly pure. It’s very low in sulphur which is the element that lives to attach to toxic elements and get them into our blood stream and it contains almost no heavy metals.
The flyash that we tend to produce is at the non toxic end of the spectrum so it is its volume that is most relevant. Conversely, in places like Eastern Europe they burn brown coal which burns at a low temp andnis loaded with toxins. Their flyash is lethal by comparison.
Nice, friendly, cute, British flyash:
[Img]https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Roberto_Terzano/publication/236462335/figure/fig1/AS:339705947279361@1458003617140/Scanning-electron-microscopy-SEM-of-coal-fly-ash-FA2.png[/thumb]
Evil foreign, killer flyash:
[Img]https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rajdip_Utane2/publication/319172882/figure/fig2/AS:528676631400448@1503057739314/Figure-No-3-Morphological-study-by-SEM-of-a-Coal-fly-ash-b-zeolite.png[/thumb]
If we are to continue on our path of demonising PM2.5 we all need to ask two important questions every single time and these are:
What shape is the particle?
What human toxins are carried on the surface of the particle?
It is not a simple matter of volume.
When diesel particulates are discussed we need to know the answers to these two questions. Same for brake dust, tyre dust, tarmac dust.
We must keep in our minds that not all PM2.5 particles are equal.
PS while looking for an SEM image of diesel particulates to end this note I found this article which actually explains things better. It’s 25 years since I penned my thesis on flyash and this artcile is better and only a few years old:
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep11232
You will no doubt be aware in the “good old days” when smoke was at its height most was due to the habit of “banking in” the fire to keep it in overnight. I’d be surprised if many people still do this. On a DEFRA exempt burner the primary air inlet cannot be fully shut to prevent “banking in”. Mine has a simple Phillips screw to do the job!
jshell said:
Gas is clean, efficient, transportable, plentiful, instant, storeable - leccy goes off, near impossible to store, tricky to cook with and needs huge prime movers 'somewhere'.
Is it really? If they plan to stop putting gas into new builds, then we'll all have to get used to badly cooked food.
DonkeyApple said:
AndyTR said:
We have a coal fire at the bottom of the house and this is the only source of heat. The fire is too small for logs and that end of the house is the old workshop, now the dining room, and was built in the early 1800's. Smokeless will be ok for us. We're off the gas network and a lot of the properties in the village rely on solid fuels. If the government is serious about lower emissions and reducing particulates they need to ditch HS2 and invest in the gas network or improving the efficiency of electric / renewable heating systems.
The trouble is that every Victorian cottage in the UK used to run on coal but almost all have been converted to Butane or oil, thus proving that coal just isn’t a necessity for anyone. Standing up as you have done is basically just saying that unlike almost everyone else you haven’t bothered yet to convert your property so you’ll just get shot down and rightly so with that argument. However, standing up and saying that in rural areas there isn’t the money to just throw around making such changes and that as they are areas of low population density the impact on humans of the PM2.5 waste is really non relevant are valid arguments from an electorate.
It’s why the logical steps after this relatively minor one is to pin any further changes to urban clean air acts where in high density human populations PM2.5 pollution does have a negative impact on residents and curbing completely unnecessary production of such waste makes complete sense. If you live in suburbia or in town then you simply don’t need to be producing this pollution. And let’s be honest, there has been zero logic in the decade long booming trend of fitting a log burner or coal fire to 99% of properties in the UK.
Edited - One final thought is that we're lucky in the fact we work and have the income to do the works we have planned. Most of the people in the village are elderly and may struggle with the new regs, sorting out the paperwork etc for renewables and I've seen a few people sold ASHP systems when they really shouldn't have been...so the government do need to step up support for rural communities.
Edited by AndyTR on Saturday 22 February 14:26
Amateurish said:
I have a coal burning stove which I use frequently over the winter (I just bought £400 of coal).
I use Welsh Anthracite (large nuts - fnar) and smokeless ovoids. These will not be banned.
This ban only affects "house coal" which is not recommended in a stove.
This is the thing. House coal and wet wood is to be phased out. Headline from the tabloids about millions dying because they will no longer be able to burn things in their homes is just fodder for the angry chaps who don’t want the truth as it doesn’t keep their rage simmering. I use Welsh Anthracite (large nuts - fnar) and smokeless ovoids. These will not be banned.
This ban only affects "house coal" which is not recommended in a stove.
Yet if you told those chappies that the crap coal and wood they were currently trying to burn was foreign they would really lose their s
t. We import vast amounts of coal from South America and I think most of the green wood comes in from Eastern Europe, or at least a chunk does.
The real story can be summed up by ‘Stupid people won’t be allowed to burn rubbish in their homes and f
k up everyone who has to live near them, intelligent people can carry on burning fuel as before’DonkeyApple said:
The real story can be summed up by ‘Stupid people won’t be allowed to burn rubbish in their homes and fk up everyone who has to live near them, intelligent people can carry on burning fuel as before’
You won't get a job at the DM with sensible non click bait posting like this. k up everyone who has to live near them, intelligent people can carry on burning fuel as before’I often watch YouTube videos about narrowboats and saw this one about a fuel boat taking on a delivery of coal to sell to people heating their boat in winter. Not sure how this will work in the future
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_OZDFML7gY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_OZDFML7gY
Cotty said:
I often watch YouTube videos about narrowboats and saw this one about a fuel boat taking on a delivery of coal to sell to people heating their boat in winter. Not sure how this will work in the future
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_OZDFML7gY
I guess that those 25kg bags of house coal will just become 25kg bags of smokeless coal. The consumers will suck up the extra cost and his margins will remain unchanged. He is probably quite safe as boaties are going to be less likely to try and bypass the law and buy house coal on the black market as it’s cost will be higher and they’ll have to go and get the bags themselves rather than having them delivered by a kosher business. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_OZDFML7gY
Ending green wood isn’t really going to impact anyone. It burns so badly that the extra cost of seasoned wood is pretty much covered by the extra heat it gives thus you use less. House coal is going to have a wider cost impact but it’s really just bringing everywhere else into line with places like London where you’ve needed to buy smokeless coal for years.
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