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from the there's-no-smoke-without-bonfire dept.
Pollutionwatch: how bad are bonfires for the environment?:
A team of French scientists has been investigating air pollution from bonfires. They used a specifically constructed fire chamber: a big room that could easily accommodate one or two whole houses, added instrumentation in the extract ducts, spread a bed of sand on the floor and set about burning leaves and hedge trimmings.
Bonfires are a frequent source of complaints to UK local councils, and in some places these complaints quadrupled during the 2020 lockdown. But little is known about the air pollution they cause. This means they are often assumed to produce pollution that is similar to home fires and wood stoves.
Any gardener (and their neighbours) will know the smell of smoke from burning green waste. Unsurprisingly, for each kilogram burned, garden waste on bonfires produced up to 30 times more particle pollution (smoke) than burning logs in a stove, but smoke from the wood stove contained up to 12 times more cancer-causing polyaromatic hydrocarbons. The pollution from bonfires more closely resembled wildfire smoke, which is being increasingly linked to health problems.
Autumn is coming and so is the annual garden-tidy before winter. The simple message is: do not burn your garden waste; compost it instead or shred it to make a mulch.
Journal Reference:
Camille Noblet, Jean-Luc Besombes, Marie Lemireb, et al. Emission factors and chemical characterization of particulate emissions from garden green waste burning Science of The Total Environment (DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.149367)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 18 2021, @12:51PM (4 children)
When I saw "bonfires", I remembered the Halloween Bonfires we used to have as part of a neighborhood party. Trimming brush over the course of a year (on several acres of far-suburban property) generated a 8-10 foot tall pile (~3 meters). We had to get a burning permit, but through the '60s that was a formality, to prevent the fire department from responding. To get it going, we used several gallons of kerosene/diesel fuel and the initial flare up was about 50 feet (15m) high. Once it burned down a bit, we could roast marshmallows, and later go inside to duck for apples. Several garden hoses were pre-staged to wet down the surrounding area and put out any little fires--we never had any problems with the fire spreading.
Every now and then I have a chance meeting with one of the kids that attended and we all have fond memories.
Now, I pile the same brush in a little low spot...and it is slowly rotting, takes years.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 18 2021, @03:16PM (3 children)
Yeah, we did that too, except that first we would tie up all the witches - those women who didn't sink when thrown into the river - to stakes in the middle of the pile. Then we would use pork fat to get that fire going good and hot.
Man, those were the days. People don't know what they are missing. MAGA!
(Score: 1, Troll) by nostyle on Saturday September 18 2021, @05:58PM (2 children)
Naturally, burning yard waste and witches is, in fact, eco-neutral since the CO2 they release came from atmospheric CO2 in the first place.
OTOH, leaving things to compost results in the release of methane - a much worse greenhouse gas.
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"Well, I can tell by your game, you're gonna start a flame" --Ohio Players, Fire
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 18 2021, @06:08PM
If the material is being composted properly, the process does not produce significant amounts of methane. Methane is produced when the decomposition is starved of oxygen, the whole point of composting is to avoid this happening.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 20 2021, @06:11PM
"Dude - sorry I hurt your feelz!" -- nostyle
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Dude - learn what a troll is.