Wood Smoke Successes & Failures
The Medical Journal of Australia's Insight+ provides a readable account of research published in the MJA in 2021 reporting that in the northern NSW town of Armidale, population 24 504, an estimated 14 premature deaths per year are attributable to long term exposure to wood heater pollution, with estimated financial cost of $32.8 million.
The health impact study was based on measurements from research study, published in 2020, shows estimated annual PM2.5 exposure (ug/m3) in Armidale, NSW, just from wood smoke pollution, ignoring all other sources such as traffic and bushfires.
The World Health Organisation recommends that people are exposed to no more than 5 ug/m3. The Australian National Standard from 2025 will be 7 µg/m3.
Anyone contemplating buying a house in Armidale should consider avoiding highly polluted areas such as central south and east Armidale.
The factsheet 'Wood heater smoke is not safe' by the Centre for Air pollution, energy and health Research (CAR, a NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in Australia) emphasizes that there is no safe level of air pollution. Indeed, a single day's exposure to more than 4 ug/m3 of wood smoke pollution increases the risk of hospital admission for heart disease.
Read on to see how the wood heating industry mislead the public and the authorities into accepting standards that are insufficient to protect public health and heaters we now know are responsible for health costs exceeding $2 billion every year in Greater Sydney, despite less than 5% of houses using wood as main heating.
Failure: Australian wood heater standards "not good enough"
Air Pollution Health expert & GP A/Prof Fay Johnston: “I couldn’t recommend changing out wood heaters to the newer standard … because the standards aren’t good enough” - SMH & The Age, 9 Aug 2021.
A/Prof Johnston's view is backed up by authorities in Christchurch (New Zealand) who introduced a much stricter standard than anything we have in Australia ('Canterbury 1') that attempts to measure real-life emissions.
A recent New Zealand (NZ) research report shows that the two standards are like chalk and cheese. Figure 7 (left) from the NZ report shows real-life emissions of heaters satisfying the Canterbury 1 standard (green bars) compared to 37 heaters satisfying stricter limits (grey bars, emissions ratings 0.4 to 1.2 grams of PM2.5 per kg per kg of wood burned, g/kg) than either the previous NZ standard (1.5 g/kg, 65% efficiency, required since 2005 in all NZ urban areas) or the current Australian standard (1.5 g/kg, 60% efficiency, required since 2019).
The much lower real-life emissions of heaters satisfying the Canterbury 1 standard puts the Australian "standard" to shame. Yet the AHHA (wood heater lobby group) continues to mislead, by claiming "Australia has the toughest standards in the world when it comes to its wood heaters " 7News, 9 Aug, Armidale Express, 20 Aug 2021.
This is not the first time that the AHHA has endangered public health by misleading Australian politicians and the public. A total of 17 incorrect and misleading claims are detailed in the this report.
We should be outraged by the AHHA's incorrect claims that are damaging public health. The “Growing up in New Zealand '' study found that even a single additional modern woodstove per hectare (satisfying the stricter standards than currently required in Australia) increased by 7% the risk children under 3 would need hospital emergency treatment for everything except accidents. There is no safe level of PM2.5 pollution.
In fact, the Australian standard is almost meaningless because it doesn't measure real-life emissions. Although real-life emissions of heaters satisfying the Canterbury 1 standard (Figure 7 above, green bars) are still higher than the limit of 0.5 g/kg required by the Canterbury 1 laboratory test, and 1.58 g/kg could still be considered unacceptably high (so even these heaters might not be suitable for all homes), Canterbury 1 is the only acceptable standard for areas where wood heaters are permitted.
Federally-funded subsidies and effective messages about the health damage from wood heater pollution reduced wood heater use in Launceston(from 66% to 30% of households) and deaths in winter from respiratory disease by 28% and cardiovascular disease by 20%. With a population of 70,000 in Launceston’s Urban Centre/Locality the cost was about $29 per resident.
After external funding ceased, the health messages about wood smoke were replaced by advertising for new heaters. Progress stalled. Sellers claimed that new heaters were clean and environmentally friendly. But these claims were based on results from heaters tested in perfect conditions in laboratories. When the same heaters were operated in real homes by real people, they were shown to be are almost as polluting as older models.
Wood smoke pollution in Armidale, August 2016.
Unlike Launceston, from 1999-2018, Armidale's pollution increased by 11% in east Armidale and 17% in the CBD.
In Armidale, from 1996 onwards, pollution measurements showed wood heaters were causing a significant problem. Some residents converted to alternative heating. Pollution started to fall.
But Armidale's wood heating industry lobby was more powerful and influential than Launceston's. Over many years, they used incorrect information to convince council to promote new wood heaters, and attempt the mammoth task of persuading residents to operate them as carefully as in the lab tests. The installation of new wood heaters negated the benefits of a small number of homes switching to clean heating.
Costly failures acknowledged in 2013. Council's Air Quality Working Group submission to the Federal Government's Consultation Regulation Impact Statement on Wood Heating states: "Council has committed more than $300,000 (excluding wages) in the past 10 years on wood smoke abatement measures ... Council’s monitoring shows that, despite our efforts, we are not reducing local levels of PM2.5 pollution. ... Over the years at Council we have received funding and training from the NSW Government for wood smoke reduction programs and while this support is appreciated, it has not led to any visible or lasting improvements. Rather than a decrease, the section below showing that pollution in 2018 was higher than 1999.
More Tasmanian research, reported in a talk by A/Prof Fay Johnston to the International Wood International Wood Smoke Researchers Network Launch in 2016 confirmed the problem. The researchers compared pollution measurements in one Tasmanian town where all wood heater users were given a SmartBurn catalyst with another town where all users were provided with education material, and a control town where no efforts were made to reduce pollution. Neither the catalyst nor the education seemed to make any difference to pollution measurements. Removing heaters was the only strategy that seemed to be successful.
Recognising that the strategies advocated by the profit-driven wood heating industry had failed, on 28 September 2015, Armidale Dumaresq Council voted to prepare a discussion paper and consultation plan, including consideration of grants, not to allow any wood heaters in new homes or homes not currently using wood heaters. There are no reports of any progress being made before the council was suspended in May 2016 and an administrator appointed to merge Armidale Dumaresq and Guyra Shire Councils.
Armidale's powerful wood heater lobby continues. In 2017, after elections for the newly amalgamated council, a motion was put forward to the Local Government NSW Conference to lobby for powers to enable councils to require wood heaters to be removed when houses were sold. Such powers, if granted, would never be used without full community consultation, and would not affect anyone currently using a wood heater, simply require the new owners of a house to install cleaner, safer heating. But the powerful wood heater lobby claimed that council wanted to ban wood heaters and leave people in the cold, creating a climate of misinformation and fear that has prevented any progress in cleaning up Armidale's air.
Pollution 11-17% higher than 1999. A UNE PhD student studied air pollution in Armidale in 1999 and found a significant correlation between wood smoke PM2.5 measurements and visits to GPs for respiratory complaints. In that year, average pollution was 13.9 ug/m3 at the council chambers and 31.8 ug/m3 in the residential area of east Armidale.
A comprehensive study of wood smoke measurements in 2018 showed that all the efforts to reduce wood smoke over the next 19 years was a total failure. Pollution for June-August was 11% higher in east Armidale and 17% higher at the council chambers than in 1999.