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To: Health & Environment Ministers & EPAs

Stop new wood heaters emitting more pollution in a few hours than the average car in an entire year

Set an independent health-based standard for domestic wood heaters and withdraw the 'standard' set by the wood heating industry (see photos) that allows them to emit more of the most health-hazardous air pollutant, PM2.5, in a few hours than the average petrol car does in an entire year.
Problems with the current 'standard' led to health experts such as the NSW Chief Medical Officer to say that wood heaters are so detrimental to health they should be banned and phased them out in built-up urban areas.
Once a new standard has been developed, existing sub-standard heaters will need to be replaced.

Why is this important?

NSW Chief Medical Officer Kerry Chant said current wood heaters models are so detrimental to health she supports banning and phasing them out in built-up urban areas.
The NSW Asthma Foundation warned that: wood smoke emissions in winter pose a bigger health danger in built up urban areas than cars or cigarettes. Australian Lung Foundation spokesman Dr James Markos said wood fire heaters should be banned from urban areas. He said real-life emissions from new wood-heaters have little relationship to measurements from a perfectly operated test model under laboratory conditions.
The UN Environment Program/World Meteorological Organization (UNEP/WMO) recommended phasing out log-burning heaters in developed countries to reduce global warming as well as improve health.
People need to know that fine particle (PM2.5) pollution is considered the most health-hazardous air pollutant, that there is no safe level of PM2.5 pollution and that over half of Sydney's PM2.5 emissions coming from a small proportion of houses using wood heaters,

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Updates

2022-06-01 19:01:53 +1000

The NSW Government is consulting on their Clean Air Regulation until 5 pm this Friday, 3 June 2022.

Despite many submissions last year on the draft Clean Air Strategy, they still claim "there is no appetite to look at wood heaters".

Email a submission to prove them wrong! If lots of people to complain about wood heater pollution, they'll eventually have to put the public interest above the profits of the wood heating industry.

For more details about 3 easy ways to make a submission, including a link to a prefilled google form see https://sites.google.com/view/healthy-air/nsw-clean-air-strategy

A position paper by 11 experts from the Centre for Air pollution, energy and health Research (CAR, an NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence) states that 'Current Australian wood heater standards are insufficient to protect health'. This is totally unacceptable. Let's insist that the NSW Government does a much better job of protecting our health!

2015-07-10 04:21:12 +1000

100 signatures reached

2015-05-12 21:09:08 +1000

50 signatures reached

2015-05-08 19:42:50 +1000

25 signatures reached

2015-05-08 13:04:19 +1000

Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment - 30-sec video - essential viewing! https://youtu.be/IlDy-tkkJk4

2015-05-08 10:59:04 +1000

10 signatures reached