Over the last month my neighbourhood, like pavements across Britain, has been strewn with abandoned Christmas trees. And at the bottom of them is often attached a wooden block – a pre-cut, log-sized piece of fuel, perfect to pop into your sleek, matt-black stove. Ready to burn bright your status as a member of the smug Scandi-chic chatterati.
I went out hunting for these blocks of wood, only to discover I had a rival. Another man, in his green Barbour jacket, and using a trailer on his bicycle, had beaten me to the best. A huge stack of them were piled up and he flashed me a particularly satisfied smile. “You need to be quick,” he said, as he pointed to the far end of the road at another fellow, bent double and trying to yank a base off a tree. Oh, yes: it was rutting season for the lentil-munchers of north London.
That Neanderthal competition for fuel confirmed that the wood-burning stove had moved from being a niche product into a mainstream one. The stoves have the benefit of being relatively dirt-free; they also have an inbuilt upward draught, which means you can get a fierce blaze in the way you just can’t with some open fires; experts reckon they are 80 per cent more efficient than a proper fire.
They have long been a favourite in the countryside, especially in homes cut off from the gas network – and with families who have a ready supply of free wood. But they are now being found in an increasing number of homes in the towns and cities of Britain.According to David Spencer at the Stove Industry Alliance, 180,000 wood-burners were installed last year, with close to one million homes in Britain now having one. The National Association of Chimney Sweeps says business has increased 40 per cent over the past couple of years as a result of this stove mania.
But last month a report in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), cast a sooty cloud over these status symbols. It said that fine particles – “biomass particulates” – such as those produced by wood-burners were bad for men’s – though, reassuringly, not women’s – health. Two towns in the Australian state of Tasmania, Launceston and Hobart, were examined. In Launceston the proportion of homes heated by wood-burners halved over a three-year period, after the council made a strenuous effort to switch consumers to central heating. Male deaths from cardiovascular diseases fell by 18 per cent, and from respiratory diseases by 23 per cent. In contrast, in Hobart, where the number of stoves was unchanged, no fall in mortality rates was recorded. This report comes two years after a Danish report which said the stoves were pumping out cancer-causing emissions.
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