Posted 12/08/2007 02:50:00 PM by Douglas

We all know smoking kills, and being in the proximity of a single cigarette one time in your life will probably kill you instantly. OK, we get it. But now there's another form of smoking that's slowing killing all of us, and you probably don't even know it. Of course, I'm talking about your fireplace.

One big source of air pollution -- as deadly as vehicle exhaust, and with many of the same toxicants as cigarette smoke -- is wood smoke.

Let's not blow things out of proportion here. Things that are deadly: Scorpions, cruise missiles, Ted Kennedy's car and Joe Hall. I don't think wood smoke comes anywhere close to the 'deadly' category. Continue:

Minnesota's antismoking ordinance allows people to go to bars and restaurants and avoid smoke, because tobacco smoke is a proven killer. Yet because we still allow recreational wood burning in the city, where homes are close together on small lots, it has become a serious livability problem. All citizens are forced to breathe outdoor air that smells of smoke in many neighborhoods, night and day, in all seasons.

This is exactly the reason I don't like the use of hyperbolic examples when trying to diffused idiots making absurd claims. For example, when people want to ban smoking everywhere, you could say, "well what about your fireplace? It puts out smoke we all have to breathe." These idiots don't hear that and think, "hmm, that's true, my position is completely untenable. They hear that and think "hmm, that's another brilliant idea!"

But let's get down to the root cause. Why do we like our fireplace?

Why, then, do people continue to burn? First, because they don't know how harmful it is. Second, because it is strongly promoted by the hearth and home industry. And third, because burning wood is an addiction.

Yep, she pretty much nailed it. How many times have I seen people breaking into the firewood store downtown to get their 'fix' of some Bolivian hard-wood to stoke their fireplace. But the real problem? The fireplace industry. How long are we going to coddle the "big hearth" corporation that are feeding our addiction, killing our citizens, destroying the planet and turning out children into wood-junkies?

I have one question for Julie Mellum: Do you listen to yourself when you write this? Lighten the hell up.

Apparently the San Francisco bay area is considering a similar ban, and here's an equally incoherent article in the con column:

Banning fires would hurt the elderly who live on fixed incomes and the poor in general. It would be an added tax on the rest of us and increase dependence on petroleum.

Ah, the fixed income argument. Hey, guess who else has a 'fixed' income? EVERYONE!