www.web.cher.ubc.ca/woodstove/welcome.htm gives you all the facts. The 80 mcg/m3 figure is an ave of all the max pm readings in 5 cities. This is basically the worst case pm they found on calm winds. Although they did not specify, the usual case is to measure pm for 24 hours to get the 24 hour pm value. If you assume that the worst case or design level is 80 mcg/m3, you see pm violations in the 5 cities.
It is expected then to hear of news reports saying bans are being put into place, and that is what is happening. Houston, B.C. has apparently banned some woodburning like Hampstead and now I hear news that Smithers, B.C. has instituted some kind of ban during a news report on a B.C. Environmental air quality advisory. I don't know if this is permanent or temporary but it is interesting that 2 out of the 5 cities that participated in the WEST study are starting bans of some kind. That is good news.
All towns should be doing this now, given the changes in pm stds to 30 mcg/m3 and the fact that many communitioes are experiencing design levels of 25 mcg/m3 pm or more. Maine is reporting 27 mcg/m3pm2.5 from pm stations following specific instructions to avoid hot spots. That does not allow much wiggle room.
I recently tried to do a thought experiment like Einstein, my hero, did all the time. I tried to duplicate the WEST experiment without expensive equipment by doing a weighted ave of pm based on Maine DEP-EPA modeling for old stoves. I assumed 10% of the population was heating their whole house with wood and 10% was uses wood heat to do aux heating of 3 rooms and pm conc of 80 mcg/m3 and 50 mcg/m3 from the modeling and only 2 families would be affected. I got a weighted ave of about 50 mcg/m3 of pm which would be an estimate of the pm over a whole city. This is checked by the WEST monitoring of 80 mcg/m3. I used 27 mcg/m3 as the pm level, experienced by the majority. Holy cow! Everybody should be doing monitoring like the WEST monitoring. Amherstburg too, after what happenned to Shirley Brandie. Smoked out by accident. Then smoked out repeatedly after being informed it did damage to her house and her health and then a neighbor pleading with a judge to let this continue because it is legal to burn wood. Then someone else doing it forcing her to move and go down to florida for the winter. She came down with a life threatening case of leukemia during the smoke out which went away after the smoke was ordered stopped by a judge pending a trial finding. Life, health, safety, and welfare are thus shown to have been severely affected. That's enough to warrant investigations of the highest kind, monitoring, modeling, consulting with the Can Lung Assn, provincial environmental investigastions and even national environmental investigations. I am trying to all of this because of a similar situation and the EPA, CDC, Maine DEP have all gotten involved to varying degrees. So, there is precedent for doing all this, and all of this work is resulting in bans, changeouts, nuisance law revisions, and great progress.
