Wood Heaters

Research estimates that wood heater smoke in Australia is linked to 558-1555 earlier than expected deaths each year, and halving the number of wood heaters in Australia would create health benefits of between $AUD 1.61 billion to $AUD 1.93 billion per year.

Note: The data visualisation tool in this study shows estimated wood heater pollution-related health impacts across Australia. Using this tool you can explore the estimates by State/Territory, by Greater Capital City Statistical Area, or by Statistical Area Level 4. The tool also enables you to select what estimates to display: wood heater emissions (WHE) (kg/year), population-weighted WHE-fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations, the number of earlier than expected deaths, or deaths per 100,000 people.

The Visualisation tool can be accessed at https://safeair.org.au/data-visualisation-wood-heater-pollution-mortality-in-australia/

Wood heater emissions (2015)

Earlier than expected deaths due to wood heater emissions (2015)

Earlier than expected deaths per 100,000 people due to wood heater emissions (2015)

An Australian study to estimate the annual burden of mortality and the associated health costs attributable to air pollution from wood heaters in Armidale, a regional Australian city (population, 24 504) with high levels of air pollution in winter caused by domestic wood heaters, 1 May 2018 – 30 April 2019. The health impact (excess annual mortality and financial costs) was assessed based upon atmospheric PM2.5 measurements.
Results:
– 14 premature deaths/year (95% CI, 12–17 deaths), corresponding to 210 years of life lost (95% CI, 172–249) are attributable to long term exposure to wood heater PM2.5 pollution in Armidale.
– The estimated financial cost is $32.8 million (95% CI, $27.0–38.5 million), or $10 930 (95% CI, $9004–12 822) per wood heater per year.
Conclusions: The substantial mortality and financial cost attributable to wood heating in Armidale indicates that effective policies are needed to reduce wood heater pollution, including public education about the effects of wood smoke on health, subsidies that encourage residents to switch to less polluting home heating (perhaps as part of an economic recovery package), assistance for those affected by wood smoke from other people, and regulations that reduce wood heater use (eg, by not permitting new wood heaters and requiring existing units to be removed when houses are sold).

Research article in MJA, single study
Australian study by Dorothy Robinson. A Podcast is also available with the article where she discusses the study findings.

Nicolas Borchers is supported through a PhD scholarship from AA.

Research based in Tasmania, given the high rate of wood fire heater use during winter which produced fine particulate matter, harmful to human health and particularly people with asthma or other chronic conditions. The researched aimed to estimate the historical health impacts and health costs from PM2.5 produced by wood heater smoke and landscape fire smoke (includes wildfires and hazard reduction burning)
Method
– Modelling study
– health impact assessment to estimate the number of cases and costs due to premature mortality, cardiorespiratory hospital admissions, asthma ED visits
– analysed historical air pollution, temperature and assessed where PM2.5 was due to landscape fire or wood fire heaters
– between January 2010 and December 2019
– characterise days an unpolluted or polluted, and if polluted determine whether they were primarily woodfire heater and landscape fire smoke
Results
– estimated 69 deaths, 86 hospital admissions and 15 asthma ED visits each year, with 74% of impacts attributable to wood fire heaters
– estimated yearly average health costs were $293 million for wood fire heaters, and $16 million for landscape fire smoke
– during extreme bushfire seasons, landscape fire smoke cost more than $34 million per year
– unlike wood fire heaters, landscape fire impacts are not distributed evenly from year to year, but vary according to the intensity of the bushfire season. If you exclude 2016 and 2019 from the analysis, the yearly cases drops substantially for landscape fire smoke

– Applied a consistent framework to model impacts of PM2.5 from eight major sources in Greater Metropolitan Region of Sydney for the year July 2010-June 2011
– Estimated the burden of current mortality attributable to this sources and number of life-years that would be produced if emissions from largest sources were reduced
– Wood heaters were the most important source of PM2.5 exposure, responsible for around 24% of the PM2.5 concentration. Followed by on-road sources (16.9%) and power stations (10.5%).
– Assumes a real-world emissions factor of 11.4 g of PM2.5 per kg of wood burned
– 50% ambient PM2.5 was from wood heaters, on-road sources and power stations.
– Wood heaters were the most important source, responsible for 1,400 YLL annually.
– Around 1.2% of mortality (5,900 YLL) was attributable to long-term exposure to all anthropogenic PM2.5, including 0.3% (1,400 YLL) attributable to wood heater–related PM2.5, 0.2% (990 YLL) to on-road sources and 0.1% (620 YLL) to power stations.
– Introduction of a 1.5 g/kg standard for wood heaters could produce 90,000 life-years.
– Estimated that if there was a sustained reduction in emissions from wood heaters due to the introductions of emissions standards of 1.5g of PM2.5 per kilogram of wood burned, this would produce 90,000 life years among the people alive in 2010/11.
– Although the burden of mortality attributable to each source is relatively small, interventions that achieve sustained reductions in emissions could provide substantial health benefits, which are likely to far outweigh the costs.