Your Smoke is Killing Me....Health Hazards of Wood Smoke

What a wonderful Fall Saturday night.  The air was cool and dry, perfect for sleeping with the windows open.  After a busy day, Jeff and I had a relaxing time at D'Amico's.....we chilled out with our favorite scotch and a delicious Sweet Sausage and Broccolli Rabe Pizza.  Ahh, life was good until our drive back home.  What HORROR!!!   As we were approaching our house, we saw a raging fire blazing from our neighbor's outdoor fire pit.  "NICE!", Jeff said...."and right under the trees, too. Now that's smart."  But the stupid part about this scene...no one was sitting around it.  They light the fire....and go in the house!  WHY?!?

What can be wrong with a fire pit, you ask?  Well, from a severe asthmatic....I am dying to tell you.  Burning wood is not as benign as one would think.  Let's see what the EPA says about the health dangers of burning wood.   Not only does wood smoke cause air pollution, but as a lung irritant it is responsible for breathing problems, heart problems, can even cause cancer and death.  It can trigger an asthma attack, hearth attack, bronchitis, pneumonia and aggravate emphysema.   It irritates the eyes and triggers headaches and allergies and long-term exposure may lead to emphysema, chronic bronchitis, arteriosclerosis, and nasal, throat, lung, blood, and lymph system cancers.  It can lower the immune system and even damage your DNA.  And wood smoke interferes with the normal lung development in infants and young children

How can that be you ask?  Well what do you think is in the smoke?  The burning of the wood not only produces smoke, particulates and ash....but also harmful toxic chemicals.  Harmful carcinogens such as benzoprenes, dienzanthracenes, dibenzocarboazoles, aldehydes, phenols and cresols, nitrogen oxides, and sulphur oxides float through the air, invade your living space and you breath them into your lungs. Wood smoke also creates tons and tons of carbon monoxide and arsenic.  YES!....arsenic, I bet you did not know that.  The worst part about the arsenic is it sticks around (no pun intended) long after the smoke is gone and accumulates, taking every opportunity to enter your system and do the nasty.  Also, if your home has vinyl siding....the smoke attaches itself to the siding and burrows into the pores and stays to harbor a nasty dirty smell.

But what the EPA is really concerned about is the particulates that floats around in the smoke.  They are too small to be filtered out by your nose and upper respiratory systems so they get buried deep in your lungs where they cause structural damage and chemical changes.  The cancer causing gases that are created by the wood smoke enters your lungs by attaching themselves to the particulates.  When deep into the lungs, they can start to work on the cells and it's DNA and voila....abnormal cell division until a nice tumor is formed.  Also, these particulates are so ultra fine that they also pass through the lung tissue and into the blood stream where they carry high levels of polycyclic hydro carbons at a concentration higher than cigarette smoke.  But the sad part about this is....people CHOOSE to smoke so they are in control of killing themselves.  When someone else's smoke invades MY space, I do not have any say in the matter.  I consider this an assault on my life and this should be a crime.  It doesn't matter to me what people do in their own yard....as long as it does not invade my yard and home.

How can the wood smoke get into your home if your doors and windows are closed?  According to the EPA...."the particulate matter in wood smoke leaving chimneys is so small that it is not stopped by doors and windows and often seeps into neighbor's houses."  The EPA also states burning wood in the winter months poses more of a danger due to temperature inversions....keeping the smoke close to the ground where it enters neighbors’ yards and houses, schools and hospitals.....and finally entering their lungs and damaging perfectly healthy tissues. Infants, children, pregnant women, senior citizens and all those suffering from allergies, asthma, or any heart/lung illness are most effected by wood smoke even at very low levels.

So now you have a good idea why Jeff and I were so irritated when we saw flames a-blazing and smoke arising.  Not only were we not able to enjoy the pleasure of sleeping with the windows open, but even with the windows closed, we are still bothered by someone else's smoke. It is becoming more popular these days, in the better neighborhoods for home owners to junk their old outdated wood burning fire pits, wood stoves and fireplaces for gas fired ones.  It results in the same pleasures of lighting an outside fire then going in the house to sit, without creating damaging wood smoke.  Once again...it is to your advantage to "Live Healthy Chemical Free"............

https://fortress.wa.gov/ecy/publications/publications/92046.pdfhttps://fortress.wa.gov/ecy/publications/publications/92046.pdf