Things I don't understand (3): wood burners

Walk down our road on a cold windless evening between about October and May and you'll be very aware of wood smoke wafting about your head. It isn't nice. It's a throwback to the 1950s and 60s days of city smog. Quite apart from the unpleasantness, the smoke is responsible for more carcinogenic pollutants in city air than vehicles. Thanks, guys.

Are the (on-trend) owners of these appliances aware that they are also risking their own health and that of other occupants of their homes? The particulate matter that they are inhaling has been linked not just to respiratory diseases like asthma and COPD but strokes, Parkinson's, heart disease, and dementia.  (See Which  and The Independent.) 

Wood burners became trendy as they are claimed to be carbon-neutral. This may be mathematically true over the lifespan of a tree - but we actually haven't got the lifespan of a tree to sort out global warming. Left growing, a mature tree will continue to remove carbon dioxide from the air. Burnt timber releases its carbon dioxide immediately. A dead tree or a tree felled in the course of woodland or forestry management - if left - will slowly decompose, becoming a habitat for fungi, lichens, invertebrates and all those other animals higher up the food chain which depend on them. The captured carbon dioxide will be released slowly and help fertilise a new generation of photosynthesising plants.

Yep - I'm burning gas to keep my house warm. But at least that hasn't come from an entity that was sequestering carbon dioxide yesterday.