The U.S. Surgeon General wrote: “There is no safe level of tobacco smoke.”

The Environmental Protection Agency says: “Wood smoke is 12 times more carcinogenic,” and the Center for Disease Control says “If you see or smell wood smoke, there is a health problem.”

Photos of houses and cities in smoke exist. The smell is everywhere. Department of Health and Human Services policy says when individuals believe threats to life and health exist, they must be investigated and stopped.

About a one-hour exposure to smoke from old stoves in design calm winds exceeds safe standards. Safe wood smoke doses are less, per CDC science.

Heart and asthma attacks can happen in an hour or less, so people must educate or replace the uninformed politicians to update laws to science as required. Wood smoke is hazardous to your health.

All these problems have forced the state to re-examine existing laws for wood burning pollution. Burning wood in stoves is OK in the country most of the time, if distances between houses are enough, but it’s unhealthy in the city 90 percent of the time, except perhaps pellet stoves and similar burning that creates no smell indicating dangerous pm and unhealthy toxic gases. So stop the problems. The laws of God and man say you cannot kill, injure, hurt, harm, poison your neighbors or make global warming five times worse.

Ernest Grolimund

Engineer, The International Coalition Against Wood Burning Pollution

Waterville


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