Health Fears Mount Over Central Europe's 'Burn Everything' Heating Efforts

Woodcutters stack firewood on horses in mountains near Teteven, Bulgaria, on December 8.

A surge in the use of wood and coal to heat homes in Europe has led to alarming pollution statistics to emerge in some European countries.
 

A worker prepares tea on a wood-burning stove at a train station in Kyiv on November 25.

Amid the geopolitical turmoil caused by Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine, gas supplies from Russia to Europe have been cut by around 88 percent adding to already spiraling costs for heating fuels. As a result, many people are being forced to turn to cheaper, dirtier, alternative heating fuels such as wood and low-grade coal.
 

Smoke rises from the chimney of a private home in Rybnik, Poland, on October 20.

Outdated fuels burned on the evening of November 20 contributed to the Polish city of Krakow recording the world’s second-highest level of fine particulate matter in the air, behind only New Delhi, India, according to a Reuters report.  

A man shovels coal into the basement of a house in Piekary Slaskie, Poland, on October 27.

Piotr Kleczkowski, an expert in environmental protection and professor at Krakow's AGH University, told Reuters some 1,500 Poles are likely to die prematurely this winter due to some Polish regions temporarily relaxing rules on heating methods in response to the energy crisis.
 

People watch steam and smoke billow from the Belchatow Power Station in Zlobnica, Poland on October 20.

In September Jarosław Kaczynski, the leader of Poland’s Law and Justice party, declared: "We should be burning everything, other than tires or similar things... Put simply, Poland needs to be heated."

Activists protest against the loosening of logging rules in Budapest in August.

In Hungary and elsewhere, air pollution is also likely to become an urgent problem this winter. A massive surge in demand for firewood in the Central European country led to Hungary’s government relaxing restrictions on logging in order to make firewood more accessible.


 

A man unloads firewood from a truck in front of a house in Teteven, Bulgaria, on December 8.

In Bulgaria last August, a ban was imposed on exporting wood to non-EU countries in response to the price of firewood doubling in the space of one year in the face of massive demand.
 

A Romanian man in an unnamed village harvests firewood from scrap building materials on October 4.

In Romania in October, the government introduced an emergency measure to cap the price of firewood at 400 Romanian lei ($86) per cubic meter as consumers urgently stockpiled ahead of the coldest weeks of winter.

Local residents collect firewood from abandoned positions of the Russian military in Izyum, Ukraine, on September 25. 

Up until recently, air quality across Europe had been steadily improving. The extraordinary circumstances of the winter of 2022 however, are likely to see that trend reverse, at least in the short term.