Air quality : Monitoring the wrong places

A study in San-Vittore, a village in the Grisons’ Misox Valley, showed that burning woody biomass was responsible for a whopping 80% of PM2.5 emissions over the course of four winter months.

Yet San-Vittore’s fixed monitoring station is one of only two in Switzerland which consistently records high levels of wood burning pollution. Why? Because, as Doctors in Favour of the Environment point out, officials prefers to monitor PM2.5 concentrations in St Moritz, Davos, Les Giettes and Montana which comply with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) strict air quality standards. Shockingly, an application to install a mobile station in Veyras in the canton of Valais which suffers from high wood burning pollution was refused on the grounds that it was not in the public interest!

And let us not forget that throughout Switzerland as a whole, PM2.5 concentrations are still on average 2 – 2.5 times above the WHO’s guideline of 5 µg/m3.

A similar trend is seen with PM10. While overall emissions were down from 1998-1999 to 2008-2009 thanks to stricter regulations governing vehicles, those emitted by wood-fired burners were virtually unchanged. Domestic wood burners are responsible for 1/6 of annual PM10 emissions in Switzerland (the same as is emitted by traffic), but in winter this can rise to over half, according to the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN). 

With more and more households turning to wood to heat their homes, the PM concentrations are, if anything, set to increase.

The biomass industry though will no doubt continue to claim the opposite.

But remember, there is no PM-laden smoke without fire.

If you are experiencing problems with wood smoke or require more information on residential wood burning in Switzerland, please feel free to contact us or to write « your story » on our website.

December 2024