Asthma with wood stoves

I have had asthma my whole life but I moved to Spain for 10 years when it magically improved. I am now back living in the UK and it has returned. I have finally worked out why. It is smoke. When I was a child it was from open coal fires, but now it is the ubiquitous wood burning stove.

I write this from a village in France on an evening in December without wind. The heavy dense smell of wood smoke pervades everything. I used to love this smell but now I struggle to breathe. I feel like I am the canary in the coal mine. Everyone is being polluted by breathing in this noxious smoke—but I can sense the poison when others can’t.

Most of my friends have wood burning stoves—it is an intrinsic part of middle-class British identity. But I fear it is killing us and not just people like me who have a sensitivity.

It must also be affecting our wildlife. Just think of the owls, mice, rabbits, dogs, cats and whatever other creatures live in the vicinity of this beautiful French village—all of them right now are absorbing this noxious gas into their lungs and bloodstreams. We really must stop this!