Scientists are starting to count the health cost of heating our homes with wood. One study, in Canberra in Australia, has found that deaths from everyday exposure to smoke from wood burners is comparable with those during the unprecedented “black summer” bushfires of 2019/2020.
Prof Sotiris Vardoulakis, part of the research team and director of the Healthy Environments and Lives (Heal) National Research Network, described winter in the city: “When I take my two boys to play basketball outdoors in winter, or when we walk the dog before dinner, there is always a smell of wood smoke in the air.”
