The New Brunswick Lung Association is encouraging people to bid farewell to their aging woodstoves for the sake of their health and the environment.
Maritime Fireplaces says customer can receive a $250 rebate for an Environmental Protection Act-approved unit.
“If you see smoke spilling out of the top of a chimney, that's probably an old-style stove with a lot of those emissions,” said George LeBlanc of Maritime Fireplaces. “New-style stoves, if you look at chimneys, you wouldn't see anything. There's heat coming out, vapor, you don't even see the smoke.”
Newer stoves can produce up 90 per cent fewer greenhouse gases than older counterparts, with fewer harmful chemicals in the air.
“Wood smoke is a trigger for COPD, asthma, and other lung diseases,” said Larry Tannahill of the New Brunswick Lung Association. “We get a lot of calls at the lung association, particularly with problem burners where people are burning things they shouldn't.”
“We want to get these old stoves out of the system.”
Burning wood with a high moisture content can ruin chimneys and leave residue. But burning garbage, colour newspapers and painted wood can be just as damaging.
The Department of the Fire Marshall says the province typically sees roughly 350 chimney fires a year, though the number is trending down.
“We see chimney fires in older homes, and basically in chimneys and appliances that are not being kept on a regular basis,” said Div. Chief Charles LeBlanc.
Tannahill says wood provides about a third of the energy for home heating in New Brunswick, and hopes to see more New Brunswickers make the change.
The lung association hopes to work with the provincial government to swap out aging woodstoves in public housing in the next year.
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Camie Kepke.
