Wood stoves pose pollution threat
DEAR Editor, I consider the proliferation of wood burning stoves is a threat almost as any other to the city’s air quality.
I cannot see the point of trying to improve the current situation without embracing the whole spectrum of transgressors.
Wood burners have in the last few years become a popular and dangerous fad. Anyone who remembers the air quality in our city prior to the inception of the Clean Air Act will also know of the health problems imposed on the population by domestic open fires and industrial usage of fossil fuel.
I really thought that we had progressed beyond the archaic forms of heating, to which wood burners I think truly belong.
I have a chronic chest condition caused by a now outlawed substance. I am trapped between three wood burners – one south, one west and one east. Only one of these is properly maintained.
The acrid stench that they cause is appalling and detrimental to the wellbeing of those expected to tolerate their installation.
Their owners appear oblivious, although they surely can’t be, to the pollution for which they are responsible.
I think that it is now time that environmental authorities implement and improve existing legislation to control the installation of these toxic antiquities in our cities. Robert Betteridge, Kings Heath,
Birmingham