Fireplaces Lose Status To Environmental and Health Concerns
Brand New Images | Getty ImagesGreenTracker| When Claude Arpels. grandson of one of the founders of VanCleef & Arpels says that a wood-burning fireplace in the city is a “ridiculous luxury”, the topic of fireplaces as a status symbol has moved front and center in the Smart Sensuality values debate.
The NYTimes tackles the trend in The Love Affair With the Fireplace Cools.
A crackling fire is cosy, comforting, romantic and inspiring to our senses. Fire is a divine gift, stolen from Zeus by Prometheus, for the benefit of humanity.
Today the fireplace is joining bottled water and MacMansions as trapping of self-centered, Modern values me-types, who ignore the reality that fireplaces pollute our air with tiny particles that trigger heart attacks and inflammation.
Even the American Lung Association recommends that consumers avoid wood fires altogether.
Wood smoke contains some of the same particulates as cigarette smoke, said Dr. Norman H. Edelman, the chief medical officer for the American Lung Association, as well as known carcinogens like aldehydes; it has also been linked to respiratory problems in young children. via NYT
Looking for alternatives to wood, we’re reading about java logs, made from recycled coffee grounds. On the Pine Mountain website, there’s a discussion of emissions from these logs versus oak and fir products.
Share Article Sat, January 22, 2011 3 Comments in Nature, Style tagged environment, fireplace, inflammation, pollution
Reader Comments (3)
Anne, no matter how much I might want to comment on this concept I won't, I don't have an iron clad read on your tolerance for creative profanity. It is such a travesty. We are supposed to indulge such total cowardice as this and yet still inspire the kids to compete on the global stage against other kids who know what it is to be hungry, whose parents are happy to live long enough to get their children past grade school? What a joke.
Not sure what you mean CDM. To be honest, I didn't know that fireplaces were such an issue until today. Goodness knows, I've burned more than my fair share of fires but am now without a fireplace.
Just the lengths the fear mongers will go to inspire a knee to quiver... tell them fireplaces are the gas companies best friend and I'd agree, and then do my dead level best to sell them inserts that make the gas compnay cuss... but to invoke the cancer monster based on what can be filtered/condensed out of wood smoke associationally linked to the massive and well deserved effort to wean folks off tobacco addiction? It just makes you wonder if the fear mongers actually understand how they are contributing to the weaking of America. Point of fact, such as they are working just as hard to spread terror as any foriegn foe waging a covert war against us. Oh, well. This is modern America, it isn't supposed to make sense.