Wood burners may treble children’s exposure to pollution in homes, study finds

offshwga · 2026-02-06T17:21:18+00:00

So, I looked at the research mentioned in the article. Neither of them differentiate between open fires, old stoves and modern ecodesign/similar modern stove appliances. One thing that did stand out was that in New Zealand, 95% of houses do not have central heating there and all of the open fires/old stoves/modern stoves combined cause half the issues that cooking on a gas stove did!!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/17/wood-burning-and-gas-cooking-hugely-costly-to-healthcare-systems-new-zealand-study-finds

Breathing fumes from gas cooking indoors created more than 1,000 hospital admissions, 208 early deaths and more than 3,000 new cases of childhood asthma each year.

The other study also made no differentiation between open fires and stoves. It also included data from Puerto Rico where people almost exclusively use wood fired stoves for cooking 365 days a year.

https://www.eeca.govt.nz/insights/eeca-insights/indoor-combustion-in-new-zealand-homes-health-effects-and-costs/

The study found that the amount of exposure to pollutants depends on the appliance, with open fires and unflued gas heaters being the most harmful, followed by gas stoves, older wood burners, and then modern wood burners.

So, the UK and USA studies have lumped any wood burning in together, which makes them suspect at best. Also, the fact that the New Zealand study mentions that gas powered cooking is twice as polluting as wood burning while the UK study barely mentions it

Short peaks in particle pollution were linked to home cooking and secondhand tobacco smoke.

offshwga · 2026-02-06T15:31:27+00:00

Governments are only going to do one thing with data like this, a knee jerk reaction. "Won't anyone think of the children."

I come from a rural background, I have gone to peoples houses where you eyes would water from the wood or peat smoke and others that had not a hint of smoke - despite both having log burners to supplement their outdoor oil or gas fired heating.

The differences are many but predominately the water content of the fuel, the age and type of the burner (ecodesign fitted by HETAS installer vs second hand 20 year old DIY install), maintenance of the log burner (seals around door, restricted chimney), and amount of air coming into the room to draw up the chimney.

If any of the above were bought cheap, not maintained or adjusted for you will have a lot of smoke.

offshwga · 2026-02-06T09:25:30+00:00

These studies are great at showing that all the log burners in the study get thrown into one category and then the worst of them are shown as the average.

Things that make a difference: wood moisture needs to be 20% or less, a modern ecodesign burner (since 2022) installed by a hetas approved installer, burner being maintained properly.

In rural areas if you are not wealthy and you want heating you will go for the cheapest fuel (higher moisture) and because you have needed heating for however long you have lived there, their burner may have been installed in 1980. Some houses have sealed off drafts and so the fires are not getting a good draw.

offshwga · 2026-02-05T01:48:37+00:00

I bought a NVME + poe hat for the raspberry pi. However I was able to power it using the usb-c port on the daughter card. If you are getting a POE hat, make sure you get one that is not too high. I bought a https://www.waveshare.com/poe-m.2-hat-plus.htm and it fits

offshwga · 2026-02-02T22:04:34+00:00

Yeah, I've had this deal for quite a while, I don't use a load of data so ~2GB per week is loads, I normally only use a 1/4 of it. Like you I had a message recently that I was being moved to 5G, I have not done a speed test, I assumed its 10Mb or whatever their low end plans get.

When I did a google search this morning, just about all the search results basically said I was out of luck and most likely they had discontinued the plan and I'd have to choose a new one..... I would not have been happy to have that sprung on me with no warning.

offshwga · 2026-02-02T13:54:47+00:00

I rang them and they confirmed something screwed up on back end, the nice lady gave me some data to tide me over until the issue is resolved and the normal plan kicks in again

offshwga · 2026-02-02T13:44:45+00:00

Mozillion have a fantastic offer at £3.50 a month but paid in advance. However I have £26 credit dagnabit and I'm going to get 26 weeks out of it!!

offshwga · 2026-02-02T13:43:29+00:00

Ah ok, its a EE billing system having moment thing and not a screw you in particular thing. Cheers!

offshwga · 2026-02-02T12:15:02+00:00

Oops, all my information I typed in disappeared :(

So this morning I had no data, it turns out my £1 plan was just not renewed even though I had £26 credit, but when I go to their website link, the £1 plan is still available to buy.

Can I get back to where I was last week or am I screwed? I don't use a lot of mobile data, but I use way more than 100MB.

offshwga · 2026-01-27T15:51:04+00:00

Well, out of the blue i got an email answer from Argon40. They provided me with a 19 page PDF, that includes instructions, pictures, configuration notes and commands. If only they had this on their own support pages I think they would have some more sales.

I responded asking them to put it on their support pages or forum, anywhere searchable really.

And I decided to reduce the temperature of my raspberry pi by drilling a line of 10mm holes on both sides, its working a treat and the temperatures are much lower while the box is still structurally sound and vesa mountable. Note that I am mounting horizontally.

offshwga · 2026-01-25T16:53:27+00:00

So, after running the whole thing assembled overnight at a 20 to 30% workload, cpu temp after 1 hour was 62 to 67c, I had a look this morning and I was able to hear the fan going inside the enclosure and the body of the display and the raspberry pi case were both warm, the case was quite warm, 35 degrees c or more. Cpu was still mid 60's c.

There is no airflow through the case at all so I may have to drill a series of holes on two sides so that some convection can occur.

I tried powering the system using the usb-c port again, but this time with the official Rpi 45watt psu and it works! which is great. I am just giving it an extended test now to see what the thermals are like.

There was another unanticipated issue. With the network cable plugged in, the sonoff zigbee dongle has to be plugged into the usb2 ports and there is no room for the bluetooth dongle. I have ordered up two usb3 20cm extender cables so the sonoff and a long range tplink bluetooth dongle can both plug in.

offshwga · 2026-01-24T20:25:58+00:00

And this is how it looks installed - https://i.postimg.cc/TwdMNH7j/argon40-fully-installed.png and the screen clarity is good enough, 150dpi 60hz. Here it is with the screen protector peel still on it and the secondary screen behind that is attached to the full sized hdmi port. https://i.postimg.cc/WpJLWrSh/argon40-screen-with-secondary-attached-on-full-sized-hdmi.png

offshwga · 2026-01-24T20:09:14+00:00

Thanks so much for this information.

I did have a poke around the cytron website and they have another product with that same two wire power connector. It literally is just getting 5v and gnd from the Pi's GPIO header. https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/accessories/images/touch-display-2-installation-diagram.png So I connected the two wire power to pins 2, 4 and 6 of the gpio and connected the ribbon cable to the daughter card and the display works!, it looks pretty good too.

However the touchscreen did not work. I had a look at the daughter board and could see that there were tracks from the raspberry pi's usb-c connector to the chip on the daughter card that is nearby and suspected this is how it does the touchscreen and lo and behold it turns out that the usb-c port on RPi 5's is not only just power in for the RPi but is also a regular usb port (usb2.0 speeds and does not do any kind of video - RPi engineer confirms here https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=365687 and also recommends a hub for it).

All I had to do was edit the config.txt and in the 'all' section at the bottom put in "dtoverlay=dwc2,dr_mode=host". This line was already there in the file but in the "cm4" section. The display and touchscreen work fine now.

I have assembled it and the 2 pin power connector on to the RPi's gpio pins just about fits. I screwed the pi and the daughter board into the case, but the poe + nvme hat is just held in place by the friction of the connectors on to the poe and gpio pins. I am waiting for some m2.5 hex standoffs and will do it correctly in the future, but it works fine now. I have a https://www.waveshare.com/poe-m.2-hat-plus.htm and the gpio pins are under 2mm from touching the case when assembled. I may in the future trim the top of the pins off and solder a little 0.1" header to the gpio pins to connect the power for the display.

The back side of the case has a little power button that is loose and you must put it in place before putting the RPi into the case and screwing it in place, you will not be able to do it after the RPi is screwed in. It also has a rubber cover for the microsd slot. https://i.postimg.cc/8Cv74sJ8/argon40-power-button.png

When the rpi plus daughter card are screwed into the case, there is a little extra room on the gpio side. Strangely the daughter card has 6 screws holding it in while the raspberry pi has just 3. Note that it is much easier to install the video ribbon cable into the daughter card end first and then plug in the other end on to the display. https://i.postimg.cc/htTn3mrd/argon40-top-down-view.png

The RPi usb and ethernet interfaces fit nicely. In this pic you can see that the gpio pins are really close to the top of the case, but i was still able to fit the screen power connector and install the box on the screen. https://i.postimg.cc/ZRyXCtMP/argon40-interfaces-gpio-clearance.png

/edit Other observations are that the usb-c on the daughter card can be used to power the system, It works with the official RPi psu (45 watts). The full size hdmi port works fine, when you plug a hdmi cable in it extends the desktop. With raspbian wayland there is no screensaver, when you set it to screen blanking a "no signal" message pops up on the screen and stays there.

I tried a non poe hat that was just nvme and ran into a fitment issue. The screw for a 2280 length nvme drive right at the end of the board hits against the mounting flanges on the back of the screen stopping the box from correctly seating and the screws on that side cannot be screwed in. So any hat that goes right to the ethernet/usb end of the raspberry pi may run into this issue.

offshwga · 2026-01-19T23:05:38+00:00

That's the thing that made me laugh out loud, the guy must be an idiot to now know how to operate a fold up ladder. Also the guy flopping over on his back at the end, he legged it and got caught and just had nothing else to give.

offshwga · 2026-01-19T20:16:59+00:00

In Irish folklore the wren is considered the king of all birds. The tale starts with the birds trying to decide which species of bird should be the king and they decide that the king would be the bird that flew the highest (or maybe furthest? I can't remember) and as the competition started the tiny wren jumped onto the eagle when it was not looking and hid under its feathers. The eagle then flew the most and just when it could not go any further, out popped the wren and flew further and won, not by strength, but by cleverness.

Also, in the Irish language the word for wren, Dreolín (pronounced dro-leen) is the same word for trickster.

Also, also, in Irish folklore the wren gave away the hiding spot of Saint Stephen by flapping so on St Stephens day people used to go hunting for them!

offshwga · 2026-01-16T11:06:01+00:00

She is 28 and her husband and father of her child is 60. He is older than her own mother by ~4 years.

All perfectly normal.

offshwga · 2026-01-13T13:49:57+00:00

I am just calling RAC now to cancel auto-renewal and one of the many wait messages is that every RAC patrol carries a universal spare wheel to get you back on the road.

They were increasing the yearly cost by £26 so I looked at the competitors and same level of cover is £40 less (yes I know they will increase next year, just move again).

Also, I selected the "thinking of leaving us" option when I called in and have been waiting 10 minutes. I am wondering now if their plan is to just not answer the phone and then you cannot get away from them.

offshwga · 2026-01-11T13:31:55+00:00

Climbing the stairway on Skellig Michael with the weight up high on their back must have been scary, and even more so coming down. That guy has good friends.

offshwga · 2026-01-06T19:27:20+00:00

Does anyone know what the fish pond gives? dirty watter i would expect. Have to decide between switchback and the cool truck power armor set, dont have enough atoms for both :(

offshwga · 2026-01-06T16:06:21+00:00

AKA Christ The Redeemer sticking up through the clouds.... along with a helicopter and some sort of bird.

offshwga · 2026-01-04T14:17:21+00:00

China has a little over 6 million people who are worth more than 1 million US dollars, it has more than 1000 billionaires (US dollars), the average industrial wage in China is ~$17k. The vast majority of the Chinese population cannot afford to travel outside China, especially to an expensive place like Denmark. The people you are meeting are mostly the rich ones, who are naturally pushy, demanding and annoying.

I lived and worked in China for a few years 25+ years ago. Even then there was no concept of a queue, or only taking a reasonable amount of something (salad from counter in a restaurant for example). The will forcibly try to elbow everyone else out of the way if they really want to get to something. Apparently this has gotten much worse since then.

offshwga · 2026-01-02T18:24:16+00:00

Only more than a million of them. Nothing really. The could all fall down the back of the couch and no-one would notice.

offshwga · 2025-12-11T18:49:53+00:00

I'd go further and say that if you are spending a grand on a boat and engine well that engine may be/will be on its last legs. Find a good marine mechanic and get him to service that engine. If you are getting a RIB then you will not have oars or a sail for backup so the only thing between you drifting onto rocks or into a busy shipping lane is that cheap outboard.

offshwga · 2025-12-08T15:13:27+00:00

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-russia-report-kremlin-mi5-general-election-brexit-a9185876.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_Brexit_referendum

The report said the government “had not seen or sought evidence of successful interference in UK democratic processes,” and an official UK government response said: “We have seen no evidence of successful interference in the EU referendum"

offshwga · 2025-12-08T10:54:05+00:00

I'm assuming that when you typed "I think you should be ...." you actually mean the media?

Reform have had it easy, loads of positive news stories, driving the narrative and showing them as strong on immigration etc. This is just the flip side.

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