Come on, this study is extremely poorly done. For starters, the lead researcher has been advocating to ban wood heaters for over 15 years, and has never done a study that has found anything that high mortality rates. Second, they assume that there is a blanket level of a PM2.5 percentage air pollution caused specifically by wood heaters evenly over Australia. This means that they are assuming an even wood heater pollution level (at a rate that is not scientifically backed, and whjile they may try to justify it, the reality is that it is pulled out of their arse) over the whole country. It is not based on actual measurements taken, there was poor and biased methodology of coming to this level. It does not take account of seasonal variations, or the fact that wood heaters are more common in areas with lower population density. The population functions they use rely on research done in North America and Europe, populations with different health concerns and living conditions. Populations, which have a higher level of air pollution and consistently worse air quality.

I will admit, that yes there is obviously health concerns from wood heaters. But this study has serious methodological concerns, heavily relies on insufficiently modeled methodologies, with poor input numbers, and worst of all is potentially biased by the people who wrote it have long standing advocacy positions. It's like asking Exxon Mobile to make a study on the health impacts of fossil fuel cars.

Masonry heater or don't even bother.

It's barely practical to run a typical modern Australian wood heater efficiently because they can't store the heat of a blazing hot efficient smokeless burn.

This is about as credible as the ANU study that said dozens of people were being killed in the ACT every year. It's a study commissioned, and written by the every people who have already decided that wood heaters are bad. If we are banning wood heaters, then we should ban fossil fuel cars as well. What a joke. This just stinks of "take away my privileges for my own good Daddy".

A work colleague had a funny story about wood fires.

His neighbours had a wood fire, and every winter they'd load up on wood and it would be billowing smoke.

One summer the neighbours had a tree go down in their backyard. Beauty! Free wood! They had it chopped up and stacked by their house. There was enough for years!

What they didn't realise is the white ants liked that setup too. They got into that, and then destroyed the wood in the house. Some of it structural.

It cost them many,many thousands of dollars to have the wood ripped out and replaced.

Workmate hasn't seen a wood fire since. He suspects the fireplace was also ripped out, or an electric/gas heater was installed.

I remember in one of his books, Dr Karl recalls knowing when winter started because the ER suddenly fills up with kids fighting for their lives.

@zero_gravitas poorly operated wood heaters surely provide the lion’s share of pollution. I’d like to see some data on emissions from a well controlled evening burn vs a poorly-managed smouldering mess.

Health bodies such as Asthma Australia and the Australian Medical Assocation want state and territory governments to ban new wood heater installs and phase out the existing ones in residential areas. But governments appear reluctant to impose such a ban.

If a ban is out of the question, then can we at least tighten the requirements on new installations (e.g. https://www.homeheat.com.au/wood-heaters/certified-wood-heaters/) and provide subsidy programs? As far as I can tell there is only one active one and that's in the ACT: https://www.energy.gov.au/rebates/wood-heater-removal-program (Armidale NSW did have one but applications have closed.)

See also https://asthma.org.au/about-us/media/switch-from-woodfire-heaters-for-healthier-heating/

They should be completely banned nationwide unless you live on at least a 4 hectare property.

Fires are horrible. Very difficult to controll the heat output, they also are very costly to run, require a lot of maintenance, and require a lot of space to store the wood.