February/March 2009 (Volume 34, Number 4)

League and Air District Co-Host Forum on Wood Smoke

By Adelia Sabiston

One in five children in the Bay Area suffers from asthma, more than twice the national average. A contributor to the onset of this life-threatening disease and a frequent cause of acute asthma attacks is the smoke from wood burning, a major source of air pollution during Bay Area winters.

The difficulties faced by young people with asthma were brought into sharp focus by Marisa Hall at a public forum on wood smoke and wintertime air pollution held December 2, 2008 by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and the League of Women Voters of the Bay Area. An American Lung Association youth leader who has asthma, Hall used her own experiences with the disease to illustrate the challenges it poses to keeping pace with school work, family life, and outdoor activities. In one example, she described how the simple act of walking her dog on an evening when fireplace smoke hung over her Hercules neighborhood precipitated an urgent situation. Exposure to the smoke gave her an asthma attack that did not respond to home treatment and required a hospital emergency room visit.

Fellow panel members Robert Clear, Ph.D. (of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) and Sulochina Lulla, M.D. (of both Kaiser Permanente and Breathe California) identified the pollutants in wood smoke and described their health effects, which have the most impact on growing children, the elderly, and people with respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.

Wood smoke contains several categories of air pollutants, including particulate matter, toxic air contaminants, and carbon monoxide.

Thirty to forty percent of the Bay Area’s wintertime particulate matter pollution comes from wood smoke. Particulate matter consists of tiny solid and liquid particles of varying composition and size. Larger particles that are inhaled can be expelled by coughing or sneezing, but smaller ones of 2.5 microns or less get drawn deep into the lungs. (A micron, or micrometer, is one-thousandth of a millimeter, or 0.00004 inches.) These tiny particles cannot be expelled, but will remain in the alveoli, or air sacs, causing irritation and inflammation. It is these smaller particles that cause the most lung damage. Exposure to particulate matter may cause nose, throat, and eye irritation, in addition to flare-ups of heart and lung diseases. A strong correlation exists between the level of air pollution from particulate matter and the numbers of emergency room and hospital admissions, as well as premature deaths from pulmonary disease.

Toxic air contaminants are linked with cancer and other serious illnesses. Exposure to carbon monoxide may cause headaches, nausea, cardiovascular symptoms, and, in confined, unventilated areas, can even be deadly.

Communication and Outreach
In a move to prevent both asthma attacks and the onset of asthma and other respiratory diseases in both children and adults, the Air District has adopted a wood burning rule to reduce the levels of air pollution produced by people burning wood, manufactured firelogs, or other solid fuels in wood stoves, fireplaces, fireplace inserts, pellet stoves, or other wood-burning devices. Included in the rule is a ban on wood burning on days between November and the end of February when the Air District issues a Winter Spare the Air Alert because forecasts predict high levels of air pollution.

Enforcing the ban on wood burning is a monumental undertaking. The second panel of the December 2 forum discussed ways to increase public awareness and observance of the Winter Spare the Air program. Lisa Fasano, director of communications and outreach for the Air District, described measures now being employed by her agency. To advise the public of Winter Spare the Air Alerts, the Air District posts them on its Website and makes them available on a toll-free phone number. People may also sign up to be directly informed of the alerts by e-mail or phone, and the Air District further promotes them through television, radio, and print media. Air District staff members have also gone door-to-door in certain key neighborhoods to explain the problem and the Winter Spare the Air program.

To enforce the alerts, the Air District patrols neighborhoods, particularly where complaints about wood smoke have been reported or where wood smoke may be expected to hover. Residents can report violations they observe to the Air District. For first violations of the ban, the Air District sends letters to the residents where the offense occurred, explaining the problem and the need to ban wood burning during Winter Spare the Air Alerts. Additional violations may draw fines from several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars, depending upon circumstances.

Other panelists — Jenny Bard of the American Lung Association of the North Bay, David Low of Breathe California, and Jason Kibbey of the City of Berkeley Community Environmental Advisory Committee — all testified to the importance of increasing awareness of the adverse health effects of wood smoke, as well as highlighting public responsibility for reducing wintertime air pollution.

Many of the local jurisdictions in the Bay Area have enacted wood burning ordinances based on a model ordinance prepared by the Air District. Cities and counties, while they can require installation of only clean-burning devices in new construction and remodels, do not have the authority to enforce compliance with Spare the Air Alerts.

Bay Area residents are instructed to call (877) 4NO-BURN [466-2876] to report wood smoke concerns or to check if a Winter Spare the Air Alert is in effect. To sign up for automatic e-mail or phone notification of Winter Spare the Air Alerts, or for more information, visit www.sparetheair.org. Residents can also call (800) 430-1515 to register for phone alert notification.