su-bboards
Split atoms, not wood.
a233  1515  25 Jul 85
AM-EPA-Wood Stoves, Bjt,0595
Wood Stoves To Come Under New Federal Regulation
By MATT YANCEY
Associated Press Writer
    WASHINGTON (AP) - The government intends to place household wood
stoves, an ancient source of heat revived by high energy prices,
under new regulations because of the millions of tons of
health-damaging pollutants they pour into the air.
    The Environmental Protection Agency, blaming the stoves for the
failure of several areas of the nation to meet federal air quality
limits, said Thursday it plans to develop pollution-reducing
performance standards for the units that could be issued within 18
months.
    The new standards would effectively require any wood-burning stoves
and fireplace inserts sold after a yet-to-be-established date to
include catalytic converters similar to those on automobiles.
    The converters, costing $200 to $300 each, can effectively reduce
the pollution from wood burners by 50 to 80 percent by recycling and
reburning the smoke the stoves produce.
    ''We estimate that residential wood stoves are exposing large
numbers of people to pollutants which are harmful to human health,''
acting Assistant EPA Administrator Charles Elkins said Thursday in
announcing the proposal.
    Without controls, Elkins said, the stoves annually could be pouring
7 million tons of soot, dirt and other particulate matters, 19
million tons of carbon monoxide, 159,000 tons of hydrocarbons and
52,000 tons of cancer-causing polycyclic organic compounds into the
atmosphere by the year 2005.
    Some experts have estimated that the polycyclic compounds and other
particulate products of incomplete combustion are causing 800 cancer
cases a year nationwide. EPA officials blame wood burning stoves for
half of that pollution.
    ''Wood smoke is one of the largest unregulated sources of pollution;
it's killing a lot of people,'' said David Doniger, an attorney for
the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group that
has been pressuring the EPA to regulate the stoves.
    In addition, the non-carcinogenic pollutants produced by the stoves
can settle in the lungs and cause or aggravate several respiratory
ailments.
    Establishing the performance standards is the EPA's first step in
drafting regulations governing the manufacture of wood stoves. David
Cohen, an EPA spokesman, said the agency hopes to issue proposed
regulations by Jan. 1, 1987.
    If that ''accelerated'' schedule is kept, new stoves not equipped
with the pollution-reducing converters or that otherwise fail to meet
new pollution limits could be banned from the market as early as two
years from now.
    Some states and a handful of communities in areas where wood burners
have become particularly popular - the Northeast, Rocky Mountains and
Northwest - already have moved to reduce the often-visible and smelly
accumulations of smoke that the stoves can produce.
    Oregon already has established state limits on the pollution that
new residential wood-burning stoves can emit. Effective next June,
that standard is 6 grams of particulate matter per hour for
catalyst-equipped stoves and 15 grams per hour for those not so
equipped.
    State officials in Oregon estimate its standards will cut pollution
from the stoves by 50 percent. Even tighter Oregon standards to be
implimented in 1988 are expected to yeild an 80 percent reduction in
pollution compared with conventional wood-burning stoves.
    Communities such as Butte, Mont., and Aspen, Colo., have passed
local ordinances limiting use of wood stoves during inversions and
other weather conditions that tend to trap pollution in place.
    Worried that more states and local governments will establish varied
standards of their own, manufacturers and distributors of the stoves
have endorsed the adoption of a nationwide federal regulations by the
EPA.
    
AP-NY-07-25-85 1815EDT
***************