Wood smoke affects every area of life

Wood smoke has affected every area of our life in many ways. We have lived in the same area for 30 years, and there has always been some wood stove users. But, with rising costs of hydro and gas, many people have turned to wood stoves. Promoted by the HPBAC who advertise them as “environmentally friendly” appliances using fake science.

So today we are surrounded by seven wood stoves on our streets, front and behind our house. And a rough count in the community numbered over 100 chimneys. We live in a High Smoke Sensitivity Zone valley where wintertime inversions lock the smoke into our valley.

With an elementary school in the mist of the community, the children are always exposed to dangerously high levels of air pollution.

A haze of wood smoke hangs in the air with mountains in the distance. — Wintertime inversions lock the smoke into the valley.

As seniors we have watched other seniors get seriously sick and die in their early 70s which really scares us. We smell smoke at night in our house, even though we block off the stove fan vent, windows with plastic and doors in the porch with covers. My husband now has a constant cough from COPD, had been treated for prostate cancer and my eyes and lungs hurt all the time. We use three air purifiers and the filters are always very dirty when we change them.

A soot-blackened air purifier filter next to a dirty dry floor mop. — “This is a photo of an air purifier filter, only about one month old, which is in my fully enclosed sunroom. Both the front and back doors are covered with blankets and the room is generally well sealed. And the dust mop shows what can accumulate in less than two days inside the house…”

Right now we are being exposed to debris burning, large controlled burns along with the wood stoves. So the air is very bad over the school and our community every day. They say it will not end until March of 2026—they have over fifty piles to burn. So, we are being forced to stay indoors almost every day, no walks to the park.

It’s like being held a prisoner and then being fed poisoned food to eat. We are so sick and tired of cleaning up our house from their filthy smoke. It’s very depressing to see black water in the pail and think we are breathing that too.