New Zealand study the latest to highlight health hazards of wood burning
It is thought that early hominids could have started using fire around 1.5 million years ago, with evidence of controlled use of fire dating back 400,000 years.
Simply put, fire is caveman technology.
Yet western governments are aggressively promoting this primitive and inefficient energy source as a panacea for our climate and environmental ills, despite warnings that it increases atmospheric CO2 and harms biodiversity.
Centuries of wood burning aren’t just impacting our climate through emissions of CO2, methane, black carbon et. al. and greatly degrading our forests, they are also exacting a toll on our health.
Burning wood releases a potent mix of toxic chemicals that are “more carcinogenic than tobacco smoke and more mutagenic than traffic exhaust”, according to Doctors and Scientists against Wood Smoke Pollution.
The latest peer-reviewed research on the impacts of burning trees in homes comes from New Zealand whose 523,000 wood burners reportedly cause over 3,000 new cases of asthma in children, and send 446 people to hospital with heart and lung problems and a further 101 to an early grave, annually.
The costs to the economy and healthcare system of homes with open fires averaged NZ$ 53,400 (US$30,600), with the study assuming that households comprised two adults and two children exposed to indoor wood pollution.
And don’t for one minute think that your modern stove burns cleanly either. A Danish study found that even so-called “eco” stoves emit 650 times more pollution that a modern truck. The fumes released by such devices reportedly cost New Zealand’s economy and healthcare system a further NZ$1,800 per household.
And then there’s the outdoor pollution to consider. Emissions spewed into the neighbourhood added NZ$26,800 and NZ$3,200 of extra health costs for each open fire and modern stove respectively.
These are staggering figures in part explained by the fact that less than 5% of New Zealand homes are centrally heated.
In Europe, each wood-burning home is responsible for a yearly average health cost of €760 (US$ 886). Despite the lower figure, air pollution from domestic wood burning nevertheless kills some 60,000 Europeans prematurely each year.
This latest study from the Antipodes provides an insight into what we can expect here if officials and biomass proponents have their way.
It is past time to consign wood-fired burners and heaters to the dustbin of history.
November 2025