Christmas stockings hung by a fireplace complete with crackling logs make for a festive image, but the rising popularity of wood-burning is being linked to a seasonal spike in air pollution.
Sales of log burners in the UK have jumped in recent years and England’s chief medical officer has warned that the trend risks undoing years of air quality improvements as homes shifted away from coal.
Sir Chris Whitty’s words of caution, buried in a 431-page report published by the government this month, have reignited concern about the dangers of a heating source seen by many households as “cosy”.
Polluting particle matter produced from burning wood peaks over the winter months, with higher concentrations more prevalent in the evenings, according to researchers at Imperial College London.
Larissa Lockwood, director of clean air at Global Action Plan, a charity, backed Whitty’s warnings, noting that log burners had grown in popularity in recent years as homeowners installed them for “pleasure reasons”.
“It’s a growing trend,” she said. The majority of stove buyers already had an alternative source of heating, she said, with most choosing them “more for aesthetics and that cosy feeling”.
Lockwood said she had installed a log burner after being attracted by their appearance but stopped using it when she learnt about the health risks, branding it an “expensive mistake”.
The Stove Industry Association (SIA) said its members reported sales of 163,000 stoves in 2023 in the UK, up from 128,000 in 2017, its oldest available figures. The trade body said the sector was “fully committed to improving air quality”.
But a study published this month by academics at the University of Birmingham has thrown light on the impact of the trend.
They found that burning biomass, such as wood in stoves or logs on an open fire to heat people’s homes, accounted for one-fifth of polluting fine particles, known as PM2.5, in areas in Birmingham and the West Midlands in 2021 and 2022 — seven times higher than in 2008-10.
Domestic combustion is a major cause of toxic air pollution, and is the biggest source of PM2.5, according to government data. Wood burning was responsible for 22 per cent of PM2.5 in the UK in 2024, compared with 18 per cent from traffic.
In his report, Whitty warned that while air quality had improved as households moved from coal to gas heating, “an enthusiasm for wood burners has reversed this positive trend over the past decade in many cities, particularly in affluent areas”.
“Cities are not a good place to have high levels of pollution since large numbers of people live in close proximity,” he added.
Because of their small size PM2.5 toxins can enter the bloodstream via the lungs before being transported around the body, lodging in the heart, brain and other organs, the government warned this year.
This could cause “serious impacts to health, especially in vulnerable groups of people such as the young, elderly, and those with respiratory problems”, it added.
Although some cities and regions, such as Birmingham and Newcastle, have introduced rules to tackle pollution from smoke, data released this month suggests they are rarely enforced.
About 5,600 complaints were made about wood burners and open fires in 2024 to local authorities in areas with restrictions on smoke, but councils issued just four fines, according to data released under freedom of information rules to the Mums for Lungs campaign group.
Jemima Hartshorn, founder of Mums for Lungs, said legislation around smoke-controlled areas “doesn’t work, and hasn’t worked for years”.
She said buyers wanted the equipment “because it is nice, feels comfortable and evokes a feeling of Christmas and cosiness . . . And there is also still a false sense that wood-burning is sustainable”.
But she added that it had “huge health impacts”, put the vulnerable in society at risk, and pitted neighbours against each other.
The SIA said all sales last year were of Ecodesign compliant models, which have lower environmental impacts, up from 17 per cent in 2017.
Under regulations introduced in the UK in 2022, known as Ecodesign, manufacturers have to comply with emissions limits, for example by burning the particulates inside the stove.
“The very latest Ecodesign compliant stoves are precision engineered to burn quality wood fuel efficiently, completely and with minimal emissions,” the SIA said, adding that when burnt with dried wood, they accounted for just a tiny fraction of the UK’s particulate matter pollution.
Despite the divided opinions, uptake of burners has been strong. Research by Global Action Plan in September found more than one-fifth of the UK public used an open fire or wood stove, with people aged between 18-34 most likely to do so at 45 per cent.
Roughly 8 per cent of the population owned a wood burner, but only 8 per cent of this group burnt out of necessity, it said.
Log burners typically cost about £950, according to online marketplace Checkatrade, with the average installation costing £2,000.
The price of kiln dried logs has fallen slightly from about 40 pence per kg in January 2023 to 37.26p in November this year, according to the Nottingham Energy Partnership, a climate change and fuel poverty charity.
Global Action Plan has called for a phasing out of log burners by 2030 where alternative sources of heating are available. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has also called for a phaseout in urban areas to improve children’s health.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said the government was “determined to clean up the air” and was “developing a comprehensive and ambitious clean air strategy”.
The government is also bringing in new standards for housebuilding that would restrict the ability to install log burners as a main heating system, as part of a broader drive to cut carbon dioxide emissions.
But Hartshorn called for the devices to be phased out. “It’s not enough,” she said. “Solid fuel heating is just incredibly polluting.”
