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Smelly bonfire smoke - pollution, health implications

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Posts

  • FireFire Posts: 19,096
    It's much harder to regulate what happens inside a home than out of it.
  • nick615nick615 Posts: 1,487
    Most of our wind comes from the NW so we'd get Liriodendron's bonfire here in West Cork on a windy day, but we don't worry because at least half the cars, for some reason, now run on full headlights even in broad daylight.  It's all EU Nanny State politics like Londoners paying £12.50 per day for their pollution to blow across East Anglia and over the North Sea.
  • punkdocpunkdoc Posts: 15,039
    Sorry to be a reprobate, but I love a bonfire, I think it brings out mans primeval instincts. I don’t have them often, and I hope I am responsible, but I just love them.
    How can you lie there and think of England
    When you don't even know who's in the team

    S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
  • I love them too, @punkdoc , and think I was a responsible "bonfirer" when we lived in the UK:  once a year, dry woody stuff only, taking care not to inconvenience anyone.  But I understand why we need to clean up air pollution.  It would be too easy to say that Ireland is sparsely populated, so it doesn't matter if we continue to burn rubbish here.
    Since 2019 I've lived in east Clare, in the west of Ireland.
  • McRazzMcRazz Posts: 440
    Our elderly neighbours heat their house with a Rayburn and burn anything that's combustible. At least twice a day on all but the hottest of days our garden is inundated in black, acrid smoke. My bedding smelt of it yesterday - it must have been hung on the line before the recent heatwave. We are already discussing moving because of it and the impact it is having on our health and our 4month old daughter. What can we do about it? Nothing. 
  • I am also a reprobate bonfirerer.
    I only burn garden waste, I choose a day when the wind is blowing away from the cottages and when no one has washing out. I do leave it burning for several days, it slowly burns with only a wisp of smoke. I live in a very rural area so I only have two neighbours, both of whom have occasional bonfires themselves.
    I find the barbeque one of them has just outside my kitchen window much more offensive. I enjoy the autumnal smell of a bonfire and the ash from the bonfire goes onto the garden.
    Air pollution from vehicles does far more damage.
  • KiliKili Posts: 1,104
    edited September 2023
    Yeah lets burn more stuff and increase the damage to the climate even more way to go....

    Wood burning


    'The power of accurate observation .... is commonly called cynicism by those that have not got it.

    George Bernard Shaw'

  • punkdocpunkdoc Posts: 15,039
    Yes, but the wood I burn has already been felled, it is not felled for the purpose of having a fire.
    How can you lie there and think of England
    When you don't even know who's in the team

    S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
  • bédébédé Posts: 3,095
    Bonfires are not what they used to be.  Pure wood and garden waste now has plastics added to it.
     location: Surrey Hills, England, ex-woodland acidic sand.
    "Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
  • @clematisdorset I had a look on the government website and it states that bonfires should be investigated by your local council if they are a statutory nuisance. I think it defines that as if they are a regular occurrence, if they blow smoke into your garden or prevent you from opening your windows. Given the recent weather I think you have every right to complain if it continues. The local fire service might help you out as well. 

    We are only allowed bonfires down our allotment site from the end of October-march and they must be watched at all times. It's really only the older folk who burn anything down there now, others just put it on a compost heap.
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