The New Smoking: Why Your Log Burner Is More Dangerous Than You Think

What if the cosy crackling fire you love is doing the same damage as a cigarette?

In this eye-opening episode, Dr. Orlena is joined by Dr. Elizabeth Wan — a London-based doctor and air quality campaigner — to tackle one of the most overlooked health risks hiding in our homes and neighbourhoods: wood smoke.

We know cigarettes are deadly. But here's what most people don't know: burning a log produces nearly identical toxic particles. In fact, a single log burner in your living room pumps out more ultra-fine pollutants than a heavy goods vehicle. These particles don't just affect your lungs — they enter your bloodstream, cross the placenta, and have been linked to cancer, asthma, and even dementia.

In this conversation, you'll discover:

🔥 Why wood smoke is the new smoking — and why even government-approved "eco stoves" aren't as safe as their label suggests

🫁 How the damage spreads far beyond your home — affecting your neighbours, your children, and communities with no power to stop it

🌍 Why change is absolutely possible — from London's clean air success story to the grassroots campaigns already shifting policy, and what you can do right now

Whether you have a log burner, live near someone who does, or simply breathe air (which is all of us), this episode will change how you look at that warm, flickering flame — and give you the knowledge to protect yourself and the people you love.

  To find out more about Mums for Lungs Campaigns: https://www.mumsforlungs.org/our-campaigns 

To find out more about the extent of wood burning in your area: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/9231a18627b94b3a80e4f33fb3b4a9fd

To find out more about air pollution and it's impact on human health:  https://www.rcp.ac.uk/policy-and-campaigns/policy-documents/a-breath-of-fresh-air-responding-to-the-health-challenges-of-modern-air-pollution/

To find out more about air pollution and it's impact on childrens health:  https://www.rcpch.ac.uk/resources/air-pollution-uk-position-statement

Most importantly do sign up for the Mums for Lungs newsletter: https://www.mumsforlungs.org/get-involved 

And do get in touch if you would like to get involved with campaigning: volunteers@mumsforlungs.org

Eat Smart System Special Offer: https://www.drorlena.com/dr-orlena-s-eat-smart-system-1 

Sign up for the Stop Dieting and Start Thriving Video: 

https://go.drorlena.com/video

Looking for support? Book a free call with Dr Orlena:

https://go.drorlena.com/book-a-call/ 

Transcript

Dr Orlena: Today we are talking about something slightly different, but very important. We are talking about the new smoking, which is basically fires, and I'm very happy to have Dr. Elizabeth one here who's gonna talk us, talk to us all about fires and the impact that it has on our health. So Elizabeth, welcome.

Welcome. 

Dr Elizabeth Wan: Thank you so much for having me on the podcast. It's great to be here. 

Dr Orlena: It's an absolute pleasure. Thanks to technology. I always think technology is amazing. Do you wanna just start by telling people who you are, what you do, and how you became interested in this area? 

Dr Elizabeth Wan: Certainly. So I am a doctor living in London.

I grew up in a very rural area of the country, and then I moved to cities for university and I have two small children, age two and four. And I really started to think about air quality and air pollution after having my first daughter. It was having [00:01:00] her in a push chair, pushing her along the road and seeing her head at the level of a car exhaust pipe that made me think.

Goodness, I wonder what is in the air that I cannot see that she's breathing in. And since then I've been a bit of a journey, a learning journey, and that's how I came to do a lot more campaigning work around air quality and particularly wintertime. Things like wood burning of very topical. 

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

And before we started recording, I was saying how, I have really fond memories of bonfires and fires. I grew up in a very rural area. I grew up in Devon and I love doing a bonfire with my dad and smelling of smoke. And I now live in Spain. And in Spain we have a huge pE people basically use wood fires as a source of fuel and they don't have any other heating.

So in the winter you walk around and you can smell wood smoke all around, which concerns me like a few years ago I started looking into this and thinking, yeah, it's not so great. [00:02:00] Actually a couple of years ago, her story, I always like to start with a story. We had a drought here in Spain, which is relevant, I promise you, but we had a drought for a couple of years, which meant that obviously we were getting a little bit short of water.

Now behind me, so I'm just on the edge of town and behind me is countryside and our tip and behind the tip is a sort of place where they take vegetable matter like. Wood bark and they, I dunno what they do with it. They get rid of it. I think they actually burn it. And in August where it's really hot, they had a big fire.

Now obviously in Spain we worry about fires because we do have bush fires and they can get out of control. So it's a big deal when there's a fire, particularly when it's relatively close to you. It's about a kilometer away. Now you could see the smoke for absolutely miles. But because it was the drought, in their wisdom, they decided not to actually put [00:03:00] this fire out.

They didn't want to use the water. So they covered it over a little bit and it smoldered. It smoldered for about a year. And when the wind was blowing in a particular way, I could smell this smoke. Yet I felt totally powerless to do anything about it. Like I knew this was going on and thinking this is really not great.

It's, there's a school right next to us as well, a primary school, and all of these kids are breathing in this smoke. And yet what can I do? How can I prove to the town hall that actually. They need to do something because as far as I understand, we have laws about this in Europe as well, that our air quality needs to be a certain level, but what can we do about it?

So that's how I got interested in it. 

Dr Elizabeth Wan: It's really horrible, isn't it? Because I think particularly if you are a mother, and I know many people on this podcast might not be, you've spent your whole pregnancy trying to be. Healthiest you can be for your child. You perhaps abstained from alcohol. I certainly didn't smoke cigarettes.

You are [00:04:00] caring about what you are eating and all of taking the right vitamin support and then your child is here and you suddenly realize there are so many aspects that you simply have no control over and you're just reliant on your local community. The local policy makers. Putting things in place so that your child can have a healthy, fulfilling life and air quality is one that is really difficult.

Yeah. To do very much about yourself. 

Dr Orlena: Yeah. And I think people don't see it. Like another time we had a gentleman behind us had a bonfire and. The smoke was blowing into my house, and actually I, even though it's nice and sunny in Spain, I can't hang my clothes up in the winter outside because it's just too smoky, so I have to dry them inside.

Anyhow, on this particular day, it was really just coming into my house and it was really unpleasant, and I know that the, basically the law is if it's annoying somebody within a town, you can ask them to. To put it out. So I went round and I politely said, my very nice British [00:05:00] way, excuse me, would you mind putting your bonfire out because I don't want to breathe in your bonfire the whole time.

And his attitude was like, no, sorry, I'm not putting it out. And I can understand that attitude in that. He just thinks it's not annoying. He doesn't see the health consequences. He just thinks that he's doing something enjoyable. Actually, sadly, I ended up calling the police, which wasn't very neighborly, but I didn't really know how else to do it, and they went round and told him that he had to put it out.

We live in a very small town. I know that wouldn't happen in London. 

Dr Elizabeth Wan: It's really difficult, and I think I was talking to you before the podcast started about how. Burning things has a really strong cultural element across almost every human civilization. We, and I grew up in a rural area where my dad had bonfires in the garden.

We weren't wood in the home to keep us warm in the winter. And when people are told they must not do that, it can have quite a visceral reaction. And I think this is something where our government could be much stronger in [00:06:00] actually educating people for the reasons. It's not desirable to have a bonfire in your garden.

Why you shouldn't have a log burner in your new newly developed home. I think people would be much more receptive if they actually understood what was going on 

Dr Orlena: well after that. Do you wanna explain to people what the research is and how we know that it isn't actually very healthy for us? 

Dr Elizabeth Wan: Certainly, one thing I was gonna just say is that if you are approaching 40 in your forties as we are, you will remember going to a nightclub when you were younger and coming away with your clothes smelling of cigarette smoke.

And I think most of us understand now that smoking cigarettes is bad for our health. And as a scientist and a doctor, as I am burning a tobacco leaf or burning a log is gonna produce. Very similar pollutants. There is not much that is different between a cigarette and a fire in your fireplace in terms of the smoke that is coming off.

So the science isn't complicated. It isn't difficult. I think it wasn't well understood before, but the research [00:07:00] is very strong. Now. The thing you worry about, 

Dr Orlena: just to interrupt you, my understanding of the burning process is. It is not necessarily, like if you think about something and you burn something, you basically get byproducts of carbon dioxide and water, and if it was burnt properly that actually the carbon dioxide isn't bad, the water isn't bad.

But what actually happens when we burn things is that they get partially burnt. And it's those partially burnt particles that are much more reactive. And they're the dangerous ones, is that correct? 

Dr Elizabeth Wan: That's correct. In a general sense. There are other chemicals that we worry about, but primarily what we're worrying about when we're burning things is the smoke.

And in the smoke it is the very small particles that are produced. You heard the phrase ultra fine particles in the news, we talk about PM 2.5. That just describes quite how small these bits of soot and carbon are. And the worry is that when you breathe those in. They get absorbed into your lungs, into your bloodstream.

So it's not just a lung disease problem. They're then carried [00:08:00] throughout your body and they can be found in the placenta of pregnant ladies. They can be found all over the body causing endless problems, and they're very difficult for your body to then get rid of. So this is the concern with burning, and while again, I think we're quite familiar with the idea that exhaust pipes of cars are not good.

Wood burners actually produce more of these ultra fine particles than road traffic do. The log burner you have in your living room produces more of them than a heavy goods vehicle would if they were parked in your living room.

Dr Orlena: Wow, 

Dr Elizabeth Wan: isn't it? It isn't a benign thing. I know that they feel nice. I know that they look nice.

They may cost warm, but these log burners are genuinely putting out. Scary high levels of pollutants, which are then being breathed in by you and your family, but also your neighbors. And as you've said, it is very difficult for local councils at the moment to do very much about problem problematic burning in the neighborhood.

Dr Orlena: And even so my understanding as well is like open fire. Yeah. That's the same thing [00:09:00] because you are all being exposed to that smoke. And then I hear people saying, but if you've got a wood stove, one with the doors closed. 

Dr Elizabeth Wan: Yes. But 

Dr Orlena: if that is well sealed, then in theory all the smoke should go up the chimney and not into your room.

But is that the case? 

Dr Elizabeth Wan: That's a theory, but you have to open and close the door to put your logs in. So what the data actually shows is that even having a log burner in your living room increases your risk of things like cancer. Just before we went on the podcast, I quickly looked up the data and there's data that if you live with a log burner that you're using once a week or risk of breast cancer is increased, for example.

So it is dreadful for lung disease and I would hope that now the medical community. And other people are pretty wise to that. My son has asthma, so I'm very nervous about that. But even other diseases, things like dementia are at increased risk if you have log burners in your home. 

Dr Orlena: And my understanding as well is when we look at our cooking as well, things like gas hos have a similar effect.

Dr Elizabeth Wan: Yes, the burning from a gas hub is slightly different in that [00:10:00] you're not getting these ultra fine carbon particles. A lot of that is due to impurities in the gas and things like benzene. There are problems with burning gas using gas to heat your home. We have recently switched out our own ho to an induction ho on a counter of the fact that my son has got asthma.

But I would like to say that burning gas is still many times more clean than burning wood. So if you're looking at how to heat your home, your gas boiler will be 400 times cleaner than your log burner. That's very clear data that Chris Witty came out with a couple of years ago when he was the Chief Medical officer in England, 

Dr Orlena: and presumably as well.

However, you are cooking your food, you want to not burn it because that's gonna be a similar. Exactly, 

Dr Elizabeth Wan: exactly. You can smell it. You can. You are breathing it in, and if you're walking along the road and you can smell it, whether that's from a council tip or from a set of allotments or from someone's home, if you're, if you can smell it, then it's causing problems in your lungs.[00:11:00] 

Dr Orlena: Yes, I had to buy my children a popcorn maker because they were incapable of making popcorn without burning the oil. And I got so fed up with this. I'm like, how about we just use this 

Dr Elizabeth Wan: very sensible, good positive, good news story locally to me, where the local allotment were burning a lot of their excess garden waste and actually.

Were quite happy to comply with the local needs to switch over to shredding it instead. And now by having it shred shredded and having the weeds removed, they've got their own mulch to use. They're not damaging things like hedgehogs that would've been nesting in the bonfires over winter and the airs cleaner.

It can, sometimes you think that this is always gonna be contentious, it isn't always contentious. Sometimes we can all work together to make a better solution for the community. 

Dr Orlena: Yeah, and I think like we were also talking about, like if we look over the last 50 years you were telling your story of your mother.

Do you want to tell your story of your mother? 

Dr Elizabeth Wan: My mom trained as a nurse in London in the 1970s, and she remembers cycling across London [00:12:00] to get to the hospital. She was living in Camberwell. She was working in Hackney, and when she got to work, she would have to wipe the soot off her face before going onto the wards and looking after her patients.

And that is not the case in London now. We, 

Dr Orlena: and that would obviously have been like, that would've been leaded petrol. The reason she had So would've been the lead in the petrol. Exactly. And so we made that move to, I remember that when we went to Unleaded Petrol, I am that old, thank you for saying forties, but I'm actually 50.

So I remember that. And I also look at, we live near Barcelona. We've been here for 15 years. And when we first came, Barcelona was like, the air pollution in Barcelona was awful. But now they, like London have a zone where a no exhaust zone and they've really improved. So I do see people generally going, okay, we're.

We are making movements, but I think this is one step more that people now need to take on board as well. 

Dr Elizabeth Wan: Yeah, I think there's, as I said, it's always challenging when you are, you feel like you're being told what to do, but likewise in London [00:13:00] we had a lot of drama around the expansion of the Ultralow emission zone, which happened at.

Couple of years ago, so when my children were very small it had already been in place for some years in central London, and then was expanded to include the outer boroughs. This was primarily about reducing the number of dirty diesel cars that were driving around. And again, there weren't actually that many diesel cars that did meet the standards, but it made it much harder to drive those particular vehicles.

There was a lot of lashback, lashback the right word. Anyway, there's a big pushback in the local community about this, but what you realized after a while was there was a few very loud voices. Yeah. And the silent minority were actually in favor. Most people owned compliant cars. And two years later, the air is cleaner.

When I walked to nursery, the data on our local pollution monitor is clear. The air is 

Dr Orlena: clear. Wow. Amazing. 

Dr Elizabeth Wan: Yeah. 

Dr Orlena: And like strangely, you probably have better air quality than we do living in. Like small town Spain, because we've got all these fires around the place that I don't seem to be able to do anything [00:14:00] about.

Dr Elizabeth Wan: Exactly. So I was gonna come onto that. We've made big process in air quality, but certainly in the UK the data is clear that log burners are increasing in popularity and more of them are being bought and put into homes rather than fewer. And with 92% of British households having an alternative source of heating.

What we can see is that quite a lot of the log burners that are being bought and put into people's homes are being done for aesthetic reasons. People want a cozy feel in their living room and they're being bought in urban homes where there's a dense local population that will be impacted by the burning.

And this is something that kind of causes me a lot of anxiety. I think most people just don't know what the problems are, and I'm hoping that things like this podcast will raise awareness so that people can make genuinely informed choices for their families and their communities about what is best, because at the moment, the information isn't out there.

Dr Orlena: Yeah. And so what would be your highlights telling [00:15:00] somebody? 

Dr Elizabeth Wan: I think the first thing I would say is do your own research. Have a look online. As you found. You really don't have to look very far to find out the information, but people will want to make their own choices. Look it up yourself. It's all there.

I think that from a legist legislative perspective, our government need to be much clearer. I was saying to you that I think the wording that has been used up till now is frankly confusing for consumers. So people now in the UK will be buying what's called a. DEFRA approved eco stove. So that's something that has been approved by our department of the environment in government.

And people will think it's an eco stove, it's eco, it is government approved, it is safe. But as I've said, the data is very clear that these are not safe. And interestingly, since we started talking about planning this podcast, the government is now going through a consultation process about whether these should ha carry cigarette style warnings on the boxes saying.[00:16:00] 

You can buy it, but just so you know, you will be increasing your family's risk of lung disease and cancer. 

Dr Orlena: That's a really good idea actually. 

Dr Elizabeth Wan: So it's quite a long way. 

Dr Orlena: I I think that's a really good idea to put labels on because I think when it's put that starkly when the government is saying, yes, this will increase your risk of cancer, like most people don't realize that, so they just go for the aesthetic, nice, warm, cozy feel.

But if you knew that cozy feel came at that high cost. Most people would choose not to. I definitely did. When we had our house done up four years ago, prior to that, we'd had a Woodburn stove in the house because it came with it. And I remember actually putting. Driftwood on it, like not realizing that driftwood is awful because it's soaked in salt and so burning the salt is awful.

And even like getting bits of wood that have got like bits of paint or chemicals on, that's even worse. And having that in my living room and then going, then realizing what I was [00:17:00] doing and going, we are never using that fire again. And when we came to do up our house, we decided not to put a fire in it.

But our house is nice and warm. We've got another source of heating, so it's not like we are cold, we just don't have that, you can get those photographs on like YouTube burning. 

Dr Elizabeth Wan: Yeah. My understanding is that the most streamed. Piece of TV on Netflix over Christmas was the clip of the fire burning?

Dr Orlena: Yeah, 

Dr Elizabeth Wan: it looks nice. Prima on Netflix. Don't have it in your living room. Yeah, and this is one of my low level campaigns. I went to a pub. Last week for a Sunday lunch and they had a fire on the tv. I love that. And I think if more pubs could do that, I would be happy to bring my children there. I will not have my son sitting in front of a smoky fire for a lunch.

It's just not worth it. 

Dr Orlena: Yeah, and as you were saying, a few years ago before cigarettes were banned in local, in inside places. You would go to a pub or a public place and it would be really smoky. I [00:18:00] remember being a student walking into a pub, a busy pub where all my friends were, and then just walking out because I was like, it is too smoky in here.

It just, 

Dr Elizabeth Wan: yeah, it's not pleasant. It's not pleasant and it, I dunno, it's just not, it's just not worth the risk for me. My, my children are in and out of hospital with their lung problems. Through no fault of my own, I think probably quite bad genetics as well, so I will not put my kids through that. But even families where they don't have children, you need to think about the impact it's having on yourself, your own cancer risk, and your neighbors.

We need to be good neighbors. The world is a frightening place right now. If we can't look out for our neighbors, what are we doing 

Dr Orlena: and what can people do other than not burning wood themselves? Is there anything we can do to appeal to our councils? Like I know that UK is no longer in the European Union, but my understanding is that here in Europe we actually have.

Rules on what our air pollution should be. Yet it's very difficult to get that measured. What do we do? 

Dr Elizabeth Wan: So the World Health Organization actually sets air quality targets, which [00:19:00] every country in the world should be aiming to aspire to. And I think it's important to regularly remind your politicians and your local councils how far they are from meeting those targets.

I think if you have personal concerns about your own air quality exposure. Sign up to a local university that's doing an air quality study. This is what I did. With me, middle Middlesex University. I had my own air quality monitor. I wore it on my hip. I wore it at work, I wore it at home and I wore it on my commute.

And it was an eye-opener to me. Honestly. It really was. Without going into too much of a tangent, there was a room at work where our ventilation and extraction had been broken. For years and the university hadn't improved it. Bearing in mind I work in a science laboratory and I could demonstrate that I was breathing in harmful chemicals every day at work, and that was the data they needed to get a change in place and fix that for us.

So check out your own exposure, look at what's going on around you, but like you said, writing to the politicians and reminding [00:20:00] them that this is not good enough. Is a big thing that we can all be doing. I was talking to you before about the huge impact that all of the campaigning about Dirty Water has had in terms of our rivers, our streams.

Are beaches and now that is a regular conversation in Parliament, air quality must be the same. 

Dr Orlena: And what about is it mums for Lungs? 

Dr Elizabeth Wan: Yes. So I campaign with a group called Mums for Lungs. It's a bit misleading because it isn't only mums and as I've just said, it isn't only lungs either. We are a group of people who are community minded, founded in South London by a mom who was worried about her school's.

Her son's walked to school, but actually now in many cities across the uk and we collaborate with people overseas as well, and we campaign hard on improving the air quality for our children. So that's particularly wood-burning, reducing diesel emissions and trying to get children out of cars and onto their bikes and their scooters to get to school.

Please have a look on our website. [00:21:00] I'll send the links to Dr. Alina to have on her site, and if you need more information, it's there. But also it's sometimes nice to have a community of people who think the same as you do and want the same things. Maybe in the end, we all want the same things. We all want to have happy, healthy lives, and we want that for our children as well.

Dr Orlena: Yeah, fabulous. And I think as well, lack of cars and increasing bicycles just has so many benefits in terms of health and the environment. It just seems like such a positive way forwards, but I totally get as well that we don't want our kids on bikes when there are cars around, but it just seems that towns and.

Cities that aren't low emission cities are just totally geared for cars. As a cyclist, I'm constantly surprised that I'm not knocked off my bike. Luckily, I cycle very defensively, but cars are just so not aware of cyclists. But I think the two of them go hand in hand. 

Dr Elizabeth Wan: Exactly. You can see these things.

They all play in together, and I think fixing one isn't enough. We have to [00:22:00] have that whole system change to make it safer for everybody on the roads to make it the air cleaner for everyone. 

Dr Orlena: Perfect. Elizabeth, thank you so much for spending some time with us. 

Dr Elizabeth Wan: Not at all. It was really interesting. Like I said, there's a lot of information out there for your listeners to just go do their own research.

They will find a wealth of things that can help to inform 'em about, 

Dr Orlena: and we, I'll leave a link to the Mums for lungs as well, so thank you very much. 

Dr Elizabeth Wan: Thank you.