Racing for Clean Air

On Saturday, May 7th, FCA will join other non-profit groups and schools as part of the Marin Human Race. We invite you to be a part of the action. This 5k run and community fair is a fun way to help raise funds for your favorite causes and to learn more about their programs and activities.

Sign up to be on FCA’s team or come out on race day to cheer us on. Be sure to stop by the FCA booth and register to win a free solar oven. If you can’t make it to the race, you can still donate to FCA on our own Marin Human Race fundraising page. To reach our page, go to www.marinhumanrace.org, click on Participating Organizations on the left panel, and then click on ‘Families for Clean Air’.

Speaking of other non-profits, Families for Clean Air (FCA) recently attended an Earth Day breakfast in honor of environmental organizations that was hosted by California State Assembly member Jared Huffman, who represents the 6th Assembly District. FCA was proud to be among the groups recognized for making air and water cleaner, food production more sustainable, and fish and wildlife populations more viable.

We applaud Marilee Eckert, CEO of the North Bay Conservation Corps, for receiving the Environmental Hero award for her excellent work teaching youth, conserving natural resources, and building a stronger, more sustainable community.

A Report from the BAAQMD Board Meeting

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) Board of Directors concluded that the region-wide approach to addressing wood smoke pollution is not solving the problem in neighborhoods most impacted by wood smoke, despite region-wide improvement in air quality this winter. At their April 6, 2011 meeting, the board agreed that changes are needed to reduce wood smoke pollution further. At Families for Clean Air (FCA), our hope is that this will translate into new outreach programs in impacted neighborhoods and more action from the BAAQMD enforcement division.

FCA presented a list of recommendations to the board, including hiring more inspectors to patrol neighborhoods on evenings and weekends when most wood burning occurs, vigorously enforcing the “opacity” rule, and installing air monitors in wood smoke-impacted neighborhoods. Although BAAQMD monitors showed only one air-quality exceedance day region-wide during the winter season, we previously presented data showing that the air quality in one neighborhood exceeded National Ambient Air Quality standards for particulate matter several times throughout the winter. There was no response to this pilot air quality monitoring study, and a deafening silence on the issue of more air quality monitoring in wood smoke-affected areas.

FCA also hoped to hear responses from the Enforcement Division regarding evidence we presented to the Board on March 16^th. This evidence suggested that several permanent exemptions, which allow households to burn on Spare The Air days, had been granted under false pretenses. Despite pointed questioning from Board members, Enforcement offered no explanation other than that the Enforcement program was “only three years old” and still evolving.

At the March 16^th, meeting a number of Board members, appeared frustrated at the meager number of wood burning citations issued (2), compared to the number of complaints sent in (1,373), given that the number of people who go to the trouble to report a violation represent only a small percentage of people affected by wood smoke. Last week, while some Board members pushed the Enforcement Division to be more aggressive about going after violators, the discussion mostly focused on finding other ways to address the problem. Some of the ideas we liked: Outreach staff meeting with PTA groups to discuss the negative health effects of wood smoke, especially on children, and reporting smoke complaint information to local governments to work cooperatively to enforce wood burning regulations.

Bay Area Meeting on Wood Smoke Pollution

The Board of Directors of the San Francisco Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) is meeting this Wednesday, April 6, at 9:45 a.m. At this meeting, there will be a recap of this past winter’s Spare the Air program, which represents the bulk of BAAQMD’s efforts concerning wood smoke enforcement and education.

This is the third year that the program has been in effect. Once again the Board will hear an upbeat report from the Outreach Department about the number of media stories and ads placed reminding people to “check before you burn.” The Enforcement Division will present its facts and figures about the number of wood smoke complaints received and the resulting patrols. The report will most likely point to the fact that this past winter the Bay Area exceeded the National Ambient Air Quality standard for particulate matter only once as proof that the BAAQMD’s efforts to reduce wood smoke pollution are working.

Families for Clean Air will be at the Board meeting to rebut the rosy picture painted by Outreach and Enforcement and tell the story of what’s happening in neighborhoods heavily impacted by wood smoke. In addition to anecdotal evidence from people living in a toxic clouds of smoke from their neighbors’ chimneys, FCA has conducted its own pilot study, conducted by the same consultant who conducts air quality monitoring studies for BAAQMD. FCA’s study shows that, not just once, but several times throughout the winter, the air quality in one wood smoke-impacted neighborhood exceeded the National Ambient Air Quality standard for particulate matter. This standard is what BAAQMD uses when it calls a winter Spare the Air alert, which bans wood burning for 24 hours.

The FCA study shows that the BAAQMD’s region-wide approach to wood smoke regulation is not reaching the communities that need it most. We will repeat the message to the Board on Wednesday: It is time to focus on a neighborhood-level approach to wood smoke pollution. There need to be air quality monitors and wood smoke abatement programs in wood smoke-impacted neighborhoods, just as there are air quality monitors in neighborhoods impacted by diesel pollution and a myriad of programs to reduce diesel pollution. It’s time to take the issue of wood smoke pollution off the back burner.

If your neighborhood has a wood smoke problem, give FCA a call or email us so that we can relay that information to the BAAQMD board at the meeting on Wednesday. Or come to the meeting at 939 Ellis Street in San Francisco. We’ll report back on the results.

Wood Smoke: An ‘Ancient and Traditional’ Cause of COPD

March, 2011. A recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle entitled, “Wood smoke harmful to health and DNA, study finds,” garnered many comments from readers. Many of the comments had a similar theme.

One reader wrote, “Note to All: Our species has been burning wood for warmth, for food preparation, and for general social evolution, for tens of thousands of years.”

Another anonymous commenter said, “Hmmm, lets see man has had FIRE for oh about 100,000 years so tell me again how many people in the study group? And if this is a TRUE STUDY why aren’t we all EXTINCT???”

Finally, there was this statement, “Needless to say, wood fires have been used by humans for thousands of years with no ill effects.”

Well, actually no–while humans have indeed been burning wood for heat and cooking for thousands of years, this practice has also been harming people’s health for thousands of years and continues to do so today.

Signs of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), an inflammatory disease state associated with breathing difficulty and sputum, have been found in Egyptian mummies and in a 1,600-year-old Alaskan mummy. Notes one researcher, “COPD secondary to exposure to open wood fires while cooking is still an important cause of COPD in many countries, and probably has been a cause of COPD ever since fire was introduced for cooking.”

In the Western world, we tend to romanticize ancient practices, including burning wood. However, there is nothing romantic about hacking up mucus, wheezing, and being out of breath. People in developing countries in Asia, South America, and Africa who rely on burning even today continue to develop COPD at alarming rates.

Because we are dedicated to education about the harmful effects of wood smoke, we at Families for Clean Air find such comments from readers to be disheartening.

Luckily, the tide seems to be turning, and there were also comments in response to this article that gave us hope: “Have the people that think wood smoke is healthy even read the article?” asks one commenter. (This question also occurred to us, and the answer is likely, “No.”) And another reader could have been speaking for us, writing, “Newsflash–smoke of any kind is harmful.”