I've recently moved to London and I'm finding my asthma got a lot worse this winter. I've been tying to understand why, and my current suspicion is that I'm aggressively reacting to wood burning stoves in my vicinity (or, probably, fine particulate matter). I can smell it outside whenever my asthma gets worse (usually in the evening), and the smell gets inside the house even with all windows closed.
It's a lost cause to try to track my wood-burning neighbours and... to what end?
Do any of you also suffer this? Any suggestions? Any boroughs/neighbourhoods where this could be better? I'd expect that if I moved to a (semi-)rural area it would actually be worse than in London.
Thank you!
Written by
CoughingWombat
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I'm afraid even in my coastal village, it's a problem - wood stoves and coal fires are the bane of my life in winter. I hope legislation will eventually deal with it. In the meantime, people seem to have been fed the idea that woodburning stoves are a green energy. Ridiculous notion, given what they're doing to the atmosphere. Rant over. My hepa air purifier helps keep things a little cleaner indoors.
It is difficult. I now live in York and in some areas it is bad. Around here I am more aware of it than I used to be, but not as bad as for you. I wish there was a huge information campaign bout the pitfalls of woodburners etc!
I love in London have done for 20 years, my asthma worsened in last 2 years. My peak flow recently dipped drastically after a 20 minute traffic jam the other day, so think air quality a significant contribute or trigger in my opinion. Wood stoves generally used by by hipster or trendy new families , so head to a more traditional suburban areas to avoid the timber burners.
Just a thought for y'all who wants to ban the fireplaces.
I can understand you, I also suffer from the smoke and dust and my asthma often gets triggered.
But smoking/e-smoking, the chemicals in cleaning supplies, deodorants or hair stuff trigger my asthma way more.
But for me and I'm sure for a lot of other folks also, fireplaces are the only source of heat.
I have one fireplace in my living room and one in the bedroom, the kitchen is between both rooms and gets a little heated with open doors.
The hallway, bathroom, toilet, stairs and every other part of the house are ice-cold often only 3-6 °C in winter.
I know it's bad and to clean it much more. I always wear a FFP2 mask to clean the fireplace and to remove the ashes.
The same outside, when the air is worse, I wear a mask or thick scarf to cover my nose and mouth.
In Germany the fireplaces have a standard which gets controlled from the chimney sweeper and we are allowed only to burn dry wood, sawdust briquettes and charcoal.
Like AutumnHedgerow, it is those people who add them as extra, or because they look cosy that I wish would understand it better. Poor heating fuels are due to be banned, though I couldn’t say how it compares with Germany. If you live in an otherwise un heated accommodation, of course you have to use what you have!
From February this year, wet wood will be banned but you can still use other types of wood: airqualitynews.com/2020/02/... . Honestly I don't know how much cleaner that will be. I think most likely any wood burning would trigger my asthma, but at least it's moving in the right direction. Given that many people in rural areas depend on wood, I don't expect that to be banned. However, in big cities, every kind of alternative burning could be banned already.
Thank you all for your feedback and sharing your experience! To mitigate the problem, I'll try a good air purifier. Besides that, I can only hope that the peak use of burners in the city be in Dec, Jan and Feb...
Could an air purifier help with this? If so I must consider it! I had a reasonably strong reaction earlier today to my husband’s lunch which he had heated in the microwave, so a miniature version of burning, sort of. It seems ridiculous, but I now feel shattered.
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Allergic to London?!
Winter rhinitis and non-allergic asthma?
Asthma a lot worse at uni but no idea why!
