Achim Dittler, chemical engineer and professor at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), measured in a typical new development area.
In Stutensee near Karlsruhe, as elsewhere, many homeowners have fulfilled their wish for a cozy fireplace in the living room.
The air quality there is excellent until the end of the day, reports Dittler (read the whole interview here).
But then people put logs in their hearths - and a crime against the environment and health begins, especially in the winter months.
Wood, especially when wet, does not burn cleanly like gas does.
Carcinogenic substances such as soot and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, including benzo(a)pyrene, are produced in open fires.
The emissions are often unfiltered via the chimney and released into the living environment without any exhaust gas cleaning.
According to Dittler, anyone who lives in a neighborhood with a high density of chimneys is often unable to ventilate the room in the evening: "It smells like a forest fire for hours."
The air pollution, in particular with very fine, respirable fine dust, is then even higher than during the day along busy inner-city streets.
This is not a polemic of a chimney despiser, but the state of knowledge.
Although many of them are only operated for a short time, the approximately 30 million so-called small combustion systems (e.g. fireplace stoves, but also pellet heating systems) in Germany emit more fine dust per year than all combustion engines in cars and trucks combined, according to official figures from the Federal Environment Agency.
Measurements in Great Britain now came to the same result there.
The dirty truth is: Fireside nights have serious consequences.
According to the Copenhagen-based European Environment Agency, particulate matter was responsible for 307,000 premature deaths across the EU in 2019.
Dirk Messner, head of the Federal Environment Agency, is now stimulating a long-overdue discussion in this country, which is likely to outrage many as an intervention in their way of life: According to Messner, Germans should in future refrain from burning wood in the household to protect their neighbors.
We should therefore say goodbye to a cultural technique that man has practiced mainly to his advantage since Neanderthal times - at least.
Will citizens be willing to do this?
What do you think?
Heartfelt
Your Marco Evers
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quiz
What would the average global temperature be if there were no greenhouse effect?
How much CO₂ does the average global citizen emit per year and how much does the typical German?
By how much has the global mean temperature increased since the pre-industrial era?
*You can find the answers at the bottom of the newsletter.
picture of the week
Bright green spook on the dead tree:
Jürgen Freund comes from Dortmund, but the photographer now lives down under.
In his adopted country, he captured this image of the Australian »ghost mushroom«, which has the gift of bioluminescence, on a summer night, defying mosquitoes and leeches.
To enhance the effect, Freund chose a 40-minute long exposure.
In the »Wildlife Photographer of the Year« competition, organized by London's Natural History Museum, the work has now received a lot of praise, but unfortunately not the first prize.
(Feedback & Suggestions?)
*Quiz Answers: -18 degrees Celsius, 4.7 tons / 8.5 tons, 1.2 degrees Celsius
