Re: Re: Activated charcoal and your lungs..(burning wood)

[Guest guest]

First, make absolutely sure that the smoky fires are what is making

you sick. Are you sure?

I have had the same experience and I was lucky enough to have nice

neighbors who were also concerned when I pointed out the health

issues. They said that they didn't know and they stopped right away.

(They have a very young baby living there..)

I think that you should download some papers from PubMed to document

the fact that inhaling smoke from wood fires

is bad for your health and try to convince your neighbors, first.

There are quite a few there.

They may be doing it because wood heat is supposedly cheaper.. but the

fact is that many wood burning stoves are often very inefficient at

heating because they suck much of the heat out and up the pipe..You

can find documentation of that on the net too.

I don't know the specifics of your heating/ac system and I am NOT

knowledgeable enough about HVAC to in any way address

the wide variety of potential technical aspects of HVAC systems.

Anyone's biggest concern is of course, safety. Many heating systems -

everything that is not electric, burns gas or oil or some other fuel,

and they produce combustion gases that are toxic.

So, lacking knowledge could be dangerous if you accidentally do

something that causes some problem.

Your #1 concern should be safety of your family from carbon monoxide

or other products of combustion.. Anything involving pressure and your

home could cause problems somewhere in the system..

One basic that not many people know is that if you have an air

intake, where it is is important. Especially how high on your

building. What kind of heater do you have?

You can sometimes put a filter on some intakes but there are common

sense concerns that may quite well take precedence..

I would never do anything involving a heater intake - especially one

that used gas or oil, without a qualified technician's approval..

Any filter causes some resistance. If your heater is depending on a

unimpeded flow of air to burn gas properly, blocking it even slightly

could cause problems..It would robably also be a code violation..

Even if your intake had nothing to do with your heater, if there is a

fan on it, you might have to worry about pressurizing/depressurizing

your home..

If there isn't a fan, keep in mind that any air hole or leak in the

lower levels of your home the act of heating creates suction the lower

you go on your home..and outgoing pressure the higher you go.. You

know that, right? (Google " stack effect " ) That suction sucks air in

the bottom and blows it out the top.

So, keep the area around it clean, at the very least.. (watch out for

ash, too, if its an old heater, make sure that there isn't asbestos

involved..)

A thing you can probably do is get at least one standalone HEPA air

cleaner and use that when you need it... Or leave it on, all the time,

on low.

That may do the trick,

Also, if you determine it s whats making you sick and the neighbors

continue to burn and don't respond to complaints, make sure that they

are not breaking any laws..

Any kind of chimney that exhausts smoke should be up as high as

possible. Building codes probably specify some figure. If I were you I

would check to make sure that the neighbor's chimneys location meets

the local codes.. (is high up enough and wide enough)

Then if they are, don't go to the building department, go to the

neighbor and in a low key way, explain that their chimney needs to

exhaust higher up.

HTH

On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 12:11 PM, we.arethecanaries

> My current rental community has fireplaces in almost all units.