Indoor air pollution from New Zealand’s 523,000 wood burners was estimated to account for 446 hospital admissions for heart and lung problems, and 101 early deaths annually, in a country with a population of just over 5 million people. Breathing fumes from gas cooking indoors created more than 1,000 hospital admissions, 208 early deaths and more than 3,000 new cases of childhood asthma each year.
Wow didnt realise we had so many people using wood and gas burners still.
Wood burners are sought after because of the radiant heat vs a heat pump (you can get this from many things, but people associate it with wood burners).
Gas is still considered fancy for cooking. People still install gas hobs.
It helps that gas is the only way to get continuous hot water systems, which people are getting installed while I’m here hating it and working on getting off gas.
I’ve got both actually, a wood burner and a gas stove run off 9kg bottles.
Wood burners are extremely cheap if you collect your own wood, and people just give shipping pallets away. Ours also has a wetback, so heats water as well.
Yeah I love sitting by a fire by won’t have one in my house due to the reasons in the article (previous numbers I’ve seen are an order of magnitude higher than this article, but those numbers also considered the affect of those outside the home).
But yeah, if you’re not paying for the wood then a small number of people with a tree, a chainsaw, and a wood splitter can knock out a year’s supply of wood for multiple households with just a day’s effort.