Would tougher emission rules be so bad?
Wood smoke concerns
Sitting around a warm fireplace or woodstove with friends or family on a cold January night seems like an idyllic setting. But have you considered your imprint on the environment and what your suburban neighbourhood smells like outside as wood smoke billowing from your chimney fills the air?
Thousands of Canadians and many West Islanders, especially after the 1998 ice storm, decided to keep a fireplace or woodstove in their home as a secondary heat source. Generally speaking, most West Islanders don't use wood-burning as their primary source for heat, barring a power interruption. They simply use it for pleasure. However, there are negative health implications associated with fireplaces, specifically in urban settings, for both the user and their neighbours. Banning wood stoves is a policy being adopted or considered by some jurisdictions in Canada and the United States, but for the most part, any laws being established simply require any wood-burning device meet EPA or CSA certified equipment to cut down on emissions. Pointe Claire recently adopted a bylaw amendment requiring any new residential wood-burning device meet these certified emission standards in order to reduce pollution. Unfortunately, it’s the only West Island municipality with such a law and the City of Montreal also doesn't have rules in place. On top of that, the Pointe Claire bylaw doesn't go far enough by asking people to replace older or inefficient wood-burning stoves or fireplaces.
A study conducted 10 years ago identified residential wood heating as one of the main sources of air pollution in the Greater Montreal area. Another Montreal study, citing Riviere des Prairies, where most homes used wood as a primary or secondary heating system, reported there was more pollution in this residential district than downtown Montreal with all its traffic and concentration of people and businesses. Furthermore, this study (with data collected between 1999 and 2002) concluded that where wood heating is significant, wood smoke affects ambient air quality.As a result, concentrations of certain pollutants can be five times higher in winter than in the summer.
While some argue it might be environmentally OK to heat your home using wood on a regular basis in the countryside, Pointe Claire, while relatively tranquil, doesn't exactly fit that bill. An outright ban on wood burning is not in the offing, but tighter regulations on emission standards need to be adopted sooner than later.
Météo: Montréal, 6 juillet 2008 / 20°C
/ Généralement ensoleillé
/ Vents: 15 Km/h / Humidité relative: 60 % 
par Albert Kramberger 
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Steven Guilbeault - 
A rose by any other standard
Kevin MulvinaArticle mis en ligne le 31 janvier 2008
Perhaps the author should take a closer look at his words in defining pollution. The sweet smell of wood fires burning, have been with us since we dragged our wives home to the family cave. To suggest the health risk from a fireplace is anywhere close to the toxic risk of breathing benzene at a self serve gas bar or exhaust fumes near a highway is simply laughable at best and tragic in the deflection of concerns he offers,
How many unwittingly sit for hours listening to bus engines at the downtown terminal never once realizing that child in the carriage is being exposed to a toxin in diesel fuel exhaust which set a land speed record 50 years ago, and holds that distinction today for growth of tumours in a Petri dish. Despite what you may have heard; so far a feat no one has been able to accomplish in those fifty years of trying, to replicate the growth with highly concentrated forms of cigarette smoke.
It was back in the early 1960s the Surgeon General announced cancers were statistically linked to smoking. I hate to say it, I remember the occasion well. Something else I observed was in the same year many efforts were made to class diesel exhaust as a carcinogen and over the years the delaying tactic was always stated as; “more research is needed”. Well last year they finally listed it, and with little fanfare the lobbies and the media went to work wiping the incident from memory.
Unfortunately our diversions over the years have prevented us from distinguishing risk from harm. The lobby groups supporting the wishes of oil and pharmaceutical interests will always try to take us off to more bandwagon feel good campaigns. We have to start to listen to common sense and physical science and focussing on the major harms, and I suspect the risks will take care of themselves in the mean time.
Fear and exclusions will never benefit society nor will bans serve but to divide us. As a community we can do better and this kind of talk forcing impositions on your neighbours, as a fore drawn conclusion no less, are not inclusive nor can a restriction ever represent a solution. Managing disease will never afford the benefit of cure, or is continuing the repetitions hoping for a different result any different today than it has ever been, it is still called insanity.