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Letter: A full ban on burning wood is possible now

The Editor, Re. “Banning wood burning makes sense for the Lower Mainland” (Opinion, The Tri-City News, Jan. 10).
wood stove

The Editor,

Re. “Banning wood burning makes sense for the Lower Mainland” (Opinion, The Tri-City News, Jan. 10).

Your editorial caught my attention. Yes, right you are, it makes a great deal of sense to stop wood-burning fireplaces from polluting the air.

But the banning of wood-burning appliances seems to have been a political hot potato with most of our elected municipal officials who sit on Metro Vancouver’s environment committee.

For almost a decade, several people in the Lower Mainland (including myself) have brought this issue to the committee’s attention, outlining the health risks that are connected with breathing the chemicals and particulate matter wood smoke contains, as pointed out in your editorial.

Further, since 1999, particulate matter has been considered “toxic” by the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

A UBC professor released scientific findings that wood smoke is harmful to people and one would have thought that government officials would act on such ironclad info and ban the emissions of wood smoke in neighbourhoods in order to protect the public.

Even now, they only want to phase out this harmful wood-smoke emission instead of banning it, even though 2025 is a long time away and much human suffering could be prevented if municipal leaders and the representatives at Metro’s environment committee eliminated wood smoke at once.

They could review their decision and place a ban on wood-burning immediately, thus acting in the best interests of the public and the environment.

Brie Oishi, Port Coquitlam