I don’t want to get all Charlton ‘from my cold, dead hands’ Heston about my wood stove … but I think there’s a bit more to these stories about PM pollution. https://twitter.com/guardian/status/1345043775022837760

The research reflects a prevailing focus on what is measurable – particulate matter – yet is incurious about qualitative questions like ‘what does a fire mean?’ or ‘what is the relationship between a hearth and wellbeing’.

I’m not denying the link between health & PM but the present research is insensitive to the meaning and practice of fuel gathering, fire use, the sociality of the hearth, and so on.

The association of smoke and dwelling is old (’lang may yer lum reek’ is Scotland’s kitschy example). But the absence of smoke is often a common shorthand for the death of a place.

Jessie Kesson wrote of Abriachan that ‘the smoke of its hidden fires would catch at your throat & envelop you forever’. She then lamented that in the 1980s ’there was no peat-reek’.

We need social science work on this. Combatting PM will have to be geographically sensitive.

We also need to know *how* stoves/fires are used. None of the research I’ve seen distinguishes between different user competencies, but e.g. understanding the use of vents in the burn cycle has a huge bearing on emissions.

Lastly, I want to know the *relative* dangers of PM from a stove compared to, say, roasting food in the oven, or sitting in a car, or cycling through traffic, or just living beside the sea. This isn’t clear to me & none of these articles help.

I’m going to calm down now and stare into the embers.

Happy New Year one and all.