Don't burn where we breathe

Brussels has a smoking problem- wood smoke. If you can smell smoke you are breathing in fine particles (PM2.5) that can penetrate deep into your lungs and cause damage to all organs of your body- including your brain.

Si vous avez le choix, n’utilisez pas de chauffage au bois.

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contact: dontburnwherewebreathe@gmail.com

Images

Images

I’m trying to work on images that could be used on posters/flyers/stickers to raise awareness of the harms of wood burning and be distributed in my local area.

Don’t burn where we breath

Watermael-Boitsfort before and after the wood fire burners are lit up:

I moved to Watermael-Boitsfort in August 2024 and have found it striking how bad the air smells of wood-smoke here during the winter evenings. Whilst researching information for this site I discovered that there are no PM2.5 measuring stations close to this area or in Woluwe St Pierre (see this map for the location of the six stations Particules fines PM2.5 | Qualité de l’air), and so as part of my letter to Bruxelles Environnement I’ve asked them to install more PM2.5 stations to better monitor the local situations.

Wood fire burners are worse than traffic…

I wanted to try to demonstrate just how bad even the ‘Eco’ wood fire burners are in terms of air pollution by comparing them to diesel trucks:

The idling emission figure of 4g/h I took from Impact of idling on fuel consumption and exhaust emissions and available idle-reduction technologies for diesel vehicles – A review – ScienceDirect . The Eco wood burner in lab conditions figure of 150 g/GJ I took from Where-theres-fire-theres-smoke_domestic-heating-study_2021.pdf and converted it to 5g/h assuming a medium sized 10kWh rated wood fire burner.

French version: