Prof James Heydon

OWNING a wood-burning stove will become “socially unacceptable” in the future, a pollution expert has predicted, amid more warnings about the damage they can do.

Researchers from Imperial College London walked Islington’s neighbourhoods armed with pollution readers last year, and found the popularity of the stoves – often pictured in dream home magazines – were creating “new air pollution hotspots in our residential streets”.

Dangerously high levels of particulate matter were found when passing a household where fuel was being burned and the report said that heating with wood is now the largest single cause of deadly matter in the UK.

A Freedom of Information request by the Tribune has revealed that in the past year, since regulations were changed and councils were given the power to issues fines, there have been six complaints about smoke in the borough, but not one has led to a penalty.

Professor James Heydon, an expert in environmental regulation from Nottingham University, said he thought the public think stoves are “clean and green” because that is the government message and called their continued rise in popularity the result of “a lack of awareness” about their dangers.

Prof Alastair Lewis

He said the government is reluctant to ban stoves or educate people “because what they’re effectively trying to do is control people’s behaviour in their own house”, adding: “And they’re going to regulate this behaviour that they’ve told you is OK for decades. So I think it’s a bit of a political hot potato.”

Wood-burning stoves are believed to be responsible for just under 40 per cent of London’s pollutant particulate matter – higher than that from road transport. Smaller than a strand of hair, it has been linked to asthma in children and heart disease and strokes in adults.

Professor Alastair Lewis, an atmospheric chemist who chairs the Defra air quality expert group, said: “I think it is under-recognised that some fraction of what you burn even in a modern stove will actually end up being inside your house rather than outside and if you have any sort of underlying health issues or you’ve got children and so on, you are exposing them to harms that, in a way, you probably wouldn’t stand them behind the exhaust pipe of a truck.”

He added: “I think in the end, we are likely to see improvements simply because the activity becomes socially unacceptable or is broadly taken to be undesirable.”

The Stove Industry Alliance has regularly hit back against claims that products are all dangerous and have said comparing the burners with HGVs is like “comparing apples to oranges”.

Andy Hill, who chairs the Stove Industry Alliance, said last year that when making the comparison “no consideration has been given as to how stoves and HGVs are used in real life or the height at which they vent”.