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"Reno, Nevada. Hazardous smog levels yesterday forced county health officials to order a first-ever ban on wood-burning stoves and fireplaces that are part of winter home life here. /.../ The pollution standard index went over 200 at 10 a.m. yesterday for the first time since 1983, when the county adopted its ordinance authorizing a ban on wood stoves in smog emergencies. // Residents had three hours to douse their fires or risk a $300 fine imposed by health officers who were patrolling for chimney smoke. Homes without electric or gas heat are exempt from the law." --- Gary E. Swan, San Francisco Chronicle, 20 December 1985 "The wood-burning stove may be a romantic return to the past and a cheap way to heat a home, but it is also causing alarming air pollution problems. // Although the smoke from one wood stove may seem minor, added together millions of stoves each year discharge tens of thousands of tons of dangerous particulate matter, carbon monoxide and a family of cancer-causing chemicals known as polycyclic organic matter. // The concentrated use of wood-burning stoves in valleys prone to winter temperature inversions has become a major air pollution source in such areas as Squaw Valley, Mammoth Lakes and Reno. /.../ Oregon and Colorado require new stoves to cut emissions by 75 percent, which will also increase their energy efficiency by 50 percent to 70 percent. /.../ The EPA estimates there are 10 million to 15 million wood-burning stoves in the United States, most of them bought in the frantic oil-crisis years of the 1970s, and 800,000 to a million new stoves are bought and installed each year. /.../ The EPA standards for wood stoves are expected to raise the costs of stoves 15 percent to 33 percent. // Most stoves will be required to have the same catalytic converters used on cars to control engine exhaust." --- Bill Soiffer, San Francisco Chronicle, 17 September 1986 "Reno. Health officials called a Stage One smog alert yesterday as the pollution standard index hit a dangerously high 208. // A Stage One alert means a ban on all wood-burning stoves. Owners of the stoves were given until 10 a.m. to extinguish their fires. Failure to do so is punishable by a fine." --- San Francisco Chronicle, 17 December 1986 (AP) "In Vail, the air sometimes takes on a foggy quality that can burn the eyes, stab the throat and make a walk up the steps an ordeal. In Aspen, the haze from 6,000 wood stoves and fireplaces can get so bad that skiers perched on mountainside ski lifts can't see the town below. /.../ A major culprit is wood smoke, a pollutant not much different from automobile or industrial emissions that also plagues quite a few towns in New England and the Pacific Northwest. // According to Colorado State University researchers, the problem is worsening statewide, even though many towns and cities now ban wood burning on high- pollution days. It's estimated that 60 percent of all Coloradans burn wood in fireplaces or stoves for fun, not for heat -- a fact that rankles officials trying to tackle the problem. /.../ 'People will call us to complain that they're running into the same kind of haze that they left behind them when they went on vacation,' said Lee Cassin, the environmental health officer in Aspen. /.../ Telluride, a town of 1,000 residents 8,700 feet above sea level, last counted 550 wood stoves and fireplaces. Since a strict ban on fireplaces in new condominiums went into effect, old permits are reportedly changing hands for as much as $1,000 a pop. /.../ In Aspen, which passed its first wood- burning regulations in 1977, only one fireplace or wood stove can be installed in newly constructed buildings. /.../ 'The managers of most short-term rental units are reluctant to tell their guests not to start a fire when they're paying $500 a night to stay there,' Cassin said. /.../ At the federal government's urging, Denver -- which usually sees 10 to 15 high-pollution days each winter -- may make cleaner-burning gasolines mandatory next winter. And by the end of this month, more than 1 million of the 1.5 million metro-area residents will be living in communities that ban wood burning on high-pollution days -- thought to be the largest such regional effort in the United States." --- Bob Diddlebock, San Francisco Examiner, 21 December 1986 "Where there's smoke, there's hydrocarbon. Scientists who took wintertime air samples in Albuquerque, N.M., say most airborne pollutants floated from burning wood, but emissions from motor vehicles were the more potent health hazard. // The study showed that 78 percent of the extractable organic matter, or hydrocarbon, was generated from wood stoves and fireplaces. However, the smoke accounted for only 58 percent of the air's mutagenicity. Pollution from motor vehicle exhaust was three times as mutagenic as wood smoke, the researchers report in the August [issue of] Environmental Science and Technology." --- Laura Beil, Science News 134(7):102, 13 August 1988 So go out and shoot three cars, then come home and light a log. - Larry