Let's put a lid on wood fires

Kenneth Dubinski merits our attention and appreciation for highlighting the problems of wood smoke. We are very grateful for the Herald's Feb. 24 front-page article describing the efforts Mr. Dubinski and Breathe Healthy Air are undertaking.

The article does a good job describing the dangers of wood smoke. Residential wood burning has become quite harmful, accounting for 35 percent of particulate pollution, as the graph in the Herald's article shows.

Another source of important information on the negative effects of wood burning is available at http://burningissues.org/. In this context, the arguments presented in the article on behalf of wood burning ("it smells good," "the California wildfires are worse," "cave men burned wood") are, to put it politely, rather tepid.

The EPA under the Bush administration has never met a pollutant it didn't like, so it is unlikely that we will soon see any state or national action to try to limit wood burning. Instead, activists should consider contacting Environment Illinois, a non-profit advocacy group. Their Web site is http://www.environmentillinois.org.

Meantime, though, communities can show concern for the health of their residents by taking steps to limit the hazards locally.

Since I moved to Batavia 11 years ago, the proliferation of smoke odor has expanded exponentially. Recreational burning has become all the rage, it seems, in even the most thickly settled portion of the community. Fire pits and "chimeneas" blaze many spring, summer and fall days and nights.

Although the Batavia community passed an ordinance some years ago limiting open fires to the purpose of cooking food only, the fires I have observed are only incidentally used for cooking, if at all. And they burn for hours on end. The acrid odor of smoke permeates my home, causes headaches, and makes a walk around the block unpleasant at best. And, yes, the smoke hangs in the air even after the flames are gone; the smoke just doesn't "dissipate and go away," as one uninformed person put it in the Herald's article.

Fire officials in Batavia seem reluctant to enforce the Batavia ordinance, perhaps because there are so many residents burning wood. Although the ordinance gives the fire chief (or designee) authority to ban open fires that are offensive to others, fire officials do not seem confident they have such authority. Those of us who recognize we are being harmed by open burning may currently be in the minority (as were anti-smoking advocates for a time); fortunately, minorities do have rights in the U.S., and the right to clean air should certainly be one of them.

Batavia has shown awareness of the environmental issues of our time, enforcing the new limits on smoking and even recently banning the idling of city vehicles for more than 30 seconds. It should be an easy next step to recognize the rights of its citizens to clean air in their homes.

Stephen Foust

Batavia