**IMPORTANT** 

Dutchess County Legislators are about ready to draft proposed wood smoke regulations.

Write to them NOW before they pass regulations

The councilpersons are ready and willing to listen to us. But we need your help. Contact them with letters, phone calls or emails. This is not a POLITICAL issue: it's a matter of health

Ask them to support our requests.  It's up to us to help them pass good laws. 

Breathing clean air is not a political matter. We all share the same planet and should share the same concerns! Councilperson contact information:

 http://www.co.dutchess.ny.us/CountyGov/Departments/Legislature/CLlegislators.htm

**Update: We received a reply from Governor Paterson's office & Dept of Environmental Conservation. They are considering our suggestions while they draft NYS regulations: establishing a minimum lot size as we asked and modifying the seasonal prohibition for existing and new OWBs are being considered. Proposed regulations coming shortly. Please contact your Dept. of Environmental Conservation with your input before the proposed regulations are drafted. As well as signing our Petition, the more letters and phone calls the legislators receive, the better chance we have of breathing clean air. Contact your local and state officials now.

Wood Smoke is a Public Nuisance and urgent health issue facing many New Yorkers (as well as the entire USA and other countries) today. The right to burn or not to burn causes heated debates from both sides. We'll present arguments and facts to help educate people on the dangers and severe health hazards of involuntary inhalation of wood smoke. We've banned barrel burning of leaves and trash.  We've banned cigarette smoking in public places. Why not ban wood smoke?  We teach our children NOT to smoke cigarettes. It's been proven that second hand cigarette smoke can cause lung cancer and other health issues. Yet we allow our children to inhale uninvited wood smoke into their lungs on a daily basis. This is ludicrous. Would we give our kids a carton of cigarettes and tell them to chain smoke? Of course not!  So why then, do we permit them to live inside a house that is constantly being bombarded by wood smoke? It makes no sense at all.  WHO TO CONTACT FOR HELP

Take a fence. Put smokers and non smokers on each side and watch the resentment grow. Smokers may not realize or may not care, but either way, they are causing health and environmental problems by the emissions thrust into the air by their wood stoves and outdoor wood burning boilers. This is an urgent issue that needs control and resolution by local and state governments who must impose and enforce strict regulations for all wood burning devices. Unfortunately, this is a much ignored issue that is slowly being addressed. Connecticut is now in the process of declaring wood smoke a Public Nuisance. New York should follow their lead. May 5th 2009: Huntington NY votes on banning ALL outdoor wood burning devices. We must also address "indoor" wood burning devices, because OWBS can easily become IWBs.  Wood stoves also create harmful smoke. Let's remember, no smoke is innocent.

Fact: Did you know that your hard earned taxpayer dollars are supplementing a practice you may oppose? Were you aware that our new government Stimulus package includes tax credits and incentives for the purchase of wood burning devices, to burn wood?   This is public information listed on the EPA "Energy Star" page.  EPA website.

Reaction: It’s shocking and counter-productive for the government to supplement, through a stimulus package, a program that will damage the world we are working so hard to heal. Your taxpayer dollars are paying for what we strongly oppose; wood stoves, OWBs, forests being massacred and used as firewood for heat and hot water. Up in needless smoke! If nothing else, this is immoral and should be stopped.  Nasa & biomass.

Argument: I can't afford the high costs of heating my home. I must burn wood.

Fact: Wood stoves are proven to be extremely inefficient, dirty and a major cause of air pollution, not to  mention the black carbon that has been linked to climate change. http://www.burningissues.org/home-heating.htm

You may be eligible for HEAP (Home Energy Assistance Program) of NYS.  http://www.otda.state.ny.us/MAIN/HEAP/  There are clean alternatives to burning wood.

Argument: It's my right to burn. Close your windows and buy an air cleaner. There are more important things to worry about than wood smoke.

Fact: Wood smoke surrounds homes and enters through air exchange, closed doors and cracks. Every time you open your door, the air inside your home is being invaded by poisonous particulate matter, some small as .01 micron. These small particles can lodge in your lungs, causing severe respiratory problems.  Keeping windows and doors closed and operating air cleaners does not remove all of the harmful particles that you are forced to breathe, entering your home from your neighbor's wood stove or OWB (outdoor wood boiler). The air inside your home is almost as polluted as the air outside your home. It's up to every one of us to help clean up our air. Every individual on this planet has the right to breathe clean, fresh air. 

Argument:  There is pollution all around us. We can't escape pollution.  FACTS & Arguments Continued (click here)

Protect the Innocent. A picture paints a thousand words. We don't have a photo of one particularly shocking scene we witnessed in recent months, but we can try to describe it: A ranch house with a large OWB standing ominously in the right side yard, streaming plumes of opaque gray smoke into the air and against the side of this home. On the front lawn stood a "warming" welcome home sign:  IT'S A BOY !  This was one of the most impactful scenes of horror to witness. Will this child's risk of asthma and respiratory problems be increased by his own parents?  You be the judge.

Contact stopwoodsmoke@woodsmokefreeny.com  Arguments & facts as well as additional wood smoke information may be posted upon request of sender.  Join us to help make a difference. 

We need the attention of Environmental Attorneys who are knowledgeable about wood smoke damage and are up to a challenge.   Wood Smoke Information    Clean Air is my right.