Woodsmoke is toxic regardless of whether it comes from wildfires or fireplaces

Wildfire smoke is some 10 times more toxic than air polluted from burning fossil fuels and contains harmful fine particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, benzene and heavy metals, to name but a few.

Fine particles are particularly dangerous as they penetrate the lungs, enter the bloodstream and are carried deep within the human body where they cause damage to the cardiovascular and nervous systems. And not just. Exposure to wildfire smoke also significantly increases the risks of dementia, asthma and stillbirths, among others.

Cue the latest argument in the biomass industry’s panoply of excuses for logging natural forests: wildfire prevention. Removing the excessive undergrowth and deadwood found in forests will mitigate and even prevent wildfires, it is claimed.

The logic is hard to fault: No wood – No fire.

But as is so often the case, human logic does not match natural complexity or the growing scientific evidence that logging and thinning to mitigate wildfires doesn’t actually work—with the exception of fire breaks surrounding infrastructures—and can even backfire (if you’ll excuse the pun).

Studies from around the world have found little evidence that increased logging to reduce “fuel loads” reduces wildfire risks. Industrial logging leaves flammable stumps and slash as well as dry soils and plummeting moisture levels. Clearcutting established, native forests and replacing them with highly combustible pine and eucalyptus monocultures is even more problematic, as Chile is finding out to its cost.

But even simple thinning can exacerbate wildfire risks through changes in microclimate and increased air movement which facilitate the spread of fire.

Governments are nevertheless increasingly handing over the management of forest ecosystems along with subsidies to so-called Hybrid Cooperative Schemes to extract wood from forests…

… to then sell as bioenergy!

Somehow, toxic wildfire smoke is rendered harmless when trees are processed and the resulting woody biomass is burnt in human furnaces and fireplaces.

That is alchemy, not science.

It is also greenwashing: There is no evidence whatsoever that increasing the domestic use of woody biomass for energy reduces wildfires. On the contrary, data from Portugal which promotes and subsidises biomass plants based on this very rationale, show that burnt areas continue to grow, both nationally and around biomass/pellet plants which source wood locally.

Immaculate combustion is a myth.

We must stop burning wood and transition to a combustion-free future, for the sake of our health and that of our forests.

June 2025