Montreal Pledges $6M to Reduce Wood Smoke
Families for Clean Air applauds the recent move by the city of Montreal to start a $6 million rebate program for homeowners who remove their fireplace or wood stove, or replace them with alternatives that burn cleaner fuel such as propane or natural gas. The rebate program is the latest step by the city to improve its air quality–two years ago, Montreal banned the installation of new wood burning fireplaces and stoves, recognizing that wood burning is a major source of air pollution and causes serious health problems.
We particularly liked this quote from the article: “If you consider that using a wood-burning stove for nine hours generates the same quantity of fine particles as a car does in one year, you can understand that this program will make a major improvement in Montreal’s air quality.”
We’d like to see U.S. cities and counties where wood smoke is a significant contributor to air pollution, such as the San Francisco Bay Area, adopt similar rebate programs. Replacing old wood burning stoves with new wood burning stoves, even if they are EPA certified, is not the answer, because they still emit particulate pollution, dioxin and other toxins.
