Health Impacts of Combustion in Homes
Literature Review on the Impacts of Residential Combustion
This report explores the health and environmental impacts of indoor residential combustion, which includes methane gas appliances, woodburning stoves and fireplaces.
Two thirds of U.S. households burn fuel in their homes. These households burn methane (also called natural gas), wood, propane, heating oil or other fuel to heat their homes and water, dry their clothes and cook their food. Burning fuel produces emissions that are harmful to human health and the environment. Some types of appliances, including cook stoves, release their emissions directly into the home, where they are inhaled by residents. Other appliances such as furnaces and water heaters, when installed and operated as designed, vent most combustion by-products to the outside, where they contribute to air pollution and climate change.
What's Burning? Residential Fuel Use in the U.S.
Of the approximately 118.2 million housing units in the United States, nearly all have access to and use electricity. Two-thirds of homes also use one or more sources of combustion: roughly 60% of residences use gas, 15% of homes use other fossil fuels including propane, fuel oil and kerosene, and 9% of homes use wood.
The primary pollutants emitted by combustion appliances include, but are not limited to:
What Are Combustion Appliances?
- Furnaces
- Stoves/Cooktops/Ovens
- Water Heaters
- Clothes Dryers
- Wood Stoves and Fireplaces
Key Findings
Worsening Asthma Symptoms
Appliances using combustion to create energy can increase asthma symptoms in children and other vulnerable populations. Studies show consistent associations between higher pollution levels and detrimental respiratory effects in children from exposure to pollutants, including worse lung function for children with asthma.
Indoor exposure to gas cooking can worsen asthma symptoms, wheezing, and result in reduced lung function in children, particularly in the absence of ventilation and for children living with asthma or allergies.
Increased Particle Pollution
Wood-burning heating appliances create sharp increases in indoor levels of particle pollution.
Dangers to health resulting from exposure to wood burning are well-established. Emissions in wood smoke can cause coughing, wheezing, asthma attacks, heart attacks, lung cancer, and premature death, among other health effects.
Indoor wood burning is responsible for up to 90% of local particulate matter pollution in smaller communities and rural areas.
Climate Change
Household use of gas, wood, propane and heating oil drives climate change through the emission of compounds such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, formaldehyde and others.
