Wood Smoke is chocking our kids’ lungs, night after night, but nobody seems to care

So, this is the “normal” of our Greek evenings in winter. It’s happening allover the country, day after day, night after night. Really nothing to do with our Greek summer nights, which everybody envy us for…

Kids gathering on our squares filled with wood smoke. Lots of it, tons of it, but no one seems to care about it.

A 160 μg/m₃ concentration of Particulate Matter PM_2.5 from wood smoke is highly toxic. You can see the PM_2.5 values on the AQ Monitor visible in the video, which I set up along with the camera on the bicycle’s handlebar. And this is still nothing, because other evenings in Nea Irakleio, Athens, where the video was made tonight, PM_2.5 easily reaches concentrations of 300 μg/m₃, and sometimes 600 μg/m₃! You can check it out yourself here, on the Purple Air website that shows, in real time on a map, the Air Quality as measured by independent Air Quality monitors from allover the world .

And all this is because of wood burning for heating up our homes.

I find this totally retrograde, unacceptable, irritating.

If you are a parent, you want to protect your kids in every aspect of their life.
And once you know what a toxic air they have to breathe night after night, which you think it is “normal” because of the classic, accepted by all excuse that other sources of heating are too expensive, then it’s your duty to finally open up your eyes and ears to the new reality and act. You can not be asked to hide the fact that your kids, growing up in this wood smoke “Airmageddon”, will pay for it later in their life anymore. The unlucky ones pay for it already in their childhood, developing asthma and other respiratory problems.

We must end this wood burning madness at once. We must demand the authorities to help us adopting other cleaner sources of energy to heat up our homes, right now! Renewable energy is unlimited and is quickly becoming the cheapest, so what are we waiting for?