[Stoves] Therepeutic Smoke

[AJH]

On Mon, 05 Feb 2007 07:41:39 -0700, Thomas Reed wrote:

>Wood smoke isn't all bad.  It is useful as a food preservative and a 
>roof deverminizer.

This is a red herring, or at least a kipper. The overall aim is to
reduce indoor air pollution, why compromise this by over emphasising a
useful byproduct of bad combustion?

A number of points spring to mind

1) smoking preserves food how? By adding a chemical that is pathogenic
to putrifying agents? 

2) compounds in smoke are pathogenic to bugs that attack thatch, by
what mechanism? Insects have a relatively crude respiratory system.

3) Are these compounds in pyrolysis off gas or just in products of
incomplete combustion of this offgas?

It looks to me that these same compounds are dangerous to children if
they are inhaled, no one has mentioned touched or digested. In fact no
one in UK would dream of having creosoted products *in* the home and
there are controls on creosote use anywhere.

If something with as diverse chemistry as woodsmoke or pyrolysis
offgas were proven to be an efficacious preservative of thatch then
the treatment should be such that people could not inhale it, as
inhaling woodsmoke is a proven pathogen. In practice I think a better
preservative will be something simpler and less toxic to humans.

I would not consider sitting in a smoky room to avoid mosquito attack
if I were given the opportunity to sit inside a DDT impregnated net.

AJH