Lobbyists for the UK wood-burning stove industry have threatened councils with legal action over public information campaigns warning of the harms of air pollution.
At least eight councils have received legal threats, according to research by the British Medical Journal (BMJ). The Stove Industry Association (SIA), which represents the UK’s expanding industry around the burning of wood in domestic settings, wrote to the councils, all London boroughs, in late 2023 complaining that flyers stating wood burners were “careless, not cosy” were in breach of UK advertising codes.
The BMJ, which sent requests under the Freedom of Information Act to the 50 councils with the highest concentration of wood burners, also found that two other councils had come in for criticism. Oxford city council received a complaint from the SIA in December 2022 about a public health campaign, but that approach stopped short of legal threats. Brighton and Hove was subject to a complaint by Hove Wood Burners to the Advertising Standards Authority.
A further seven councils were lobbied by the SIA over wood burning, with some material including claims that wood burning – which produces carcinogenic byproducts that harm human health – provided “health and wellbeing benefits”, including lowering blood pressure.
Jemima Hartshorn, founder and director of the pressure group Mums for Lungs, said she was shocked by the findings of the investigation. “This is straight from the playbook of tobacco,” she told the Guardian.
“The evidence could not be clearer – burning in your home increases toxic air pollution for you and your neighbours. From cardiac and lung issues to cancer and dementia, more than 700 illnesses are now linked to air pollution, and non-essential wood burning is a huge contributor to toxic particle pollution. And now we read that the industry body is talking the health evidence down in order to stop public bodies from informing the public of health dangers. This must be stopped. And I hope government will finally wake up and put our health first: ensure that everyone stays warm in their homes without being polluted or polluting their neighbours.”
A spokesperson for the SIA said: “The SIA has never sought to prevent councils from improving air quality or running public health campaigns. Our correspondence with local authorities was aimed at ensuring their marketing campaigns were proportionate, contained a balanced view and, most importantly, distinguished clearly between open fires, older appliances and modern eco-design-compliant stoves.”
However, eco-design style stoves have also been associated with severe public health risks, as they produce large amounts of PM2.5 particles, small particles of soot that have been associated with a wide range of human illnesses from miscarriage to dementia, heart disease and respiratory problems. Although they have lower PM2.5 emissions than open fires, they still produce emissions about 450 times greater than gas boilers. Recent research found wood burning was associated with 2,500 deaths a year in the UK.
The SIA has itself been found in breach of advertising codes, as the ASA ruled last November that ads claiming stoves had “very low emissions” were misleading.
Domestic burning has become one of the UK’s biggest sources of air pollution, contributing to about 20% of fine particulate matter emissions.
About one in 10 UK households now has a wood-burning stove, after years of promotion of burning by interior designers and fashion brands. Although some are installed in homes in rural areas where other forms of heating are less available, and where the damage to neighbours is less, an increasing number are in densely populated urban settings, where they are usually a supplement to existing gas boilers.
The government is running a consultation on wood-burning stoves, but health campaigners have criticised the exercise for omitting any option to ban or restrict the use of wood-burning stoves in urban settings. Instead, the consultation suggests new stoves should be of a lower-emitting variety, and could carry health warnings.
Campaigners likened this to advising smokers to adopt low-tar cigarettes, which is a marginal improvement but still exposes users to high health risks. The consultation ends on 19 March.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “Dirty air robs people of their health and costs our NHS millions each year to treat lung conditions and asthma. We are consulting on taking action to reduce emissions from domestic burning, and their impact on the health of householders and their neighbours. By limiting emission levels and introducing new labels as outlined in our consultation, families will be able to make better, healthier choices when heating their homes.”
