Councils face industry legal threats for campaigns warning against wood burning stoves

(Press-News.org) As the UK government considers adding health warnings to new wood burning stoves, as part of a public consultation on solid fuel burning, councils in England are being threatened with legal action for running public health campaigns warning against their use, reveals an investigation published by The BMJ today.

Freedom of Information requests show that just under a third of the 50 councils in England with the highest concentration of wood burning stoves had been threatened with legal action or lobbied by the Stove Industry Association (SIA).

Other local authorities have received leaflets from the main stove trade group claiming that wood burning is good for you by lowering blood pressure and stress.

Figures suggest that one in 10 homes in England now own a wood burning stove. UK government emission data show that domestic burning is a major source of fine particle air pollution (PM2.5) and there is a growing body of evidence linking exposure to PM2.5 with a range of health conditions, including cardiovascular disease, cancer and asthma.

While not all forms of domestic burning are equally polluting, research cited by the chief medical officer for England, Chris Whitty, has shown that even the newest stoves emit considerably more pollution than a gas boiler or electric heating.

Yet local public health campaigns have seen the stove industry take action against them for asking households to think twice before lighting their fires and woodburners.

For example, eight London boroughs - Croydon, Haringey, Islington, Lewisham, Merton, Richmond, Southwark and Wandsworth - were threatened with legal action in late 2023 over a joint public awareness campaign on the harms of wood burning.

Brighton and Hove City Council has also faced pressure over a campaign warning that wood burning is a “cosy killer” after data from air quality sensors across Brighton and Hove showed dramatic increases in harmful particle pollution last winter, with a peak at 10 pm, when wood burners would typically be lit.

Oxford City Council received an email from the SIA in December 2022 after a similar public health campaign. The trade group requested evidence that wood burning harmed health and claimed that there was “no scientific evidence” for “adverse” health effects, but it didn’t threaten legal action.

The SIA, which represents stove manufacturers, suppliers, and retailers, said that it took very seriously the allegations that it had wrongly threatened councils and that several factors had been taken out of context.

“The correspondence we have had with local authorities and trading standards has been aimed at trying to provide a balanced and educational position on behalf of our members,” it told The BMJ. “At no point have we intentionally set out to undermine public awareness about the health effects of domestic wood burning. Air quality is a key priority for the SIA. Our members have worked and continue to work hard to drive down emissions by improving technology.”

Larissa Lockwood, director of policy and campaigns at the climate action charity Global Action Plan, said: “I’m shocked. I’ve actually never heard of anything like this - industry lobbying public health servants to ignore a serious public health issue and go against medical advice.”

Meanwhile, three councils - Dudley in the West Midlands, Elmbridge in Surrey, and Rushmoor in Hampshire - were sent a leaflet from the SIA claiming wood burning provides “health and wellbeing benefits.” Dudley also received a video from the SIA rebutting the “misconceptions” that wood burning stoves were harmful and claiming that “eco” stoves were the “future of low carbon, low emission, sustainable heating.”

Commenting on The BMJ’s findings, Jonathan Blades, head of policy at the charity Asthma + Lung said: “These tactics by the stove industry clearly try to undermine public awareness of those risks, and that means people aren’t able to make informed decisions for their health. That’s a real concern that the councils need to address.”

An SIA spokesperson said: “There were some campaigns by local authorities that we and our members felt were not balanced and could, in our opinion, be seen as scaremongering the public. It was these that we challenged. That action was not to oppose public health objectives but to try to seek to ensure that the messaging used was fair and balanced.”

Whitty tells The BMJ: “Air pollution is an extremely important, solvable health problem that leads to many diseases, including asthma in children, cancers, heart disease, and stroke. In urban areas, high concentrations of medically vulnerable people and high concentration of solid fuel burning can combine. The growth of wood burning stoves in urban areas now contributes a significant and growing proportion of air pollution and in some places is reversing many decades of progress.”

Laura Horsfall of the Institute of Health Informatics says: “We need clearer and more honest public health messaging. Wood burning is often marketed as natural, cosy, or environmentally friendly. There’s also a need for greater awareness that even ‘eco design’ stoves are not pollution free.”

A Defra spokesperson says: “Dirty air robs people of their health and costs our NHS millions each year. We’ve set new ambitious targets to cut air pollution by a third by 2030, including the public’s exposure to fine particulate matter - the pollutant most harmful to human health.

“To help reach this target, we are planning stricter limits on newly purchased stoves and health labels for fuels, as we strive to protect public health and the environment.”

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