Name: Open fires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Age: As old as mankind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Appearance: A homely, warming alternative to sucking on a car exhaust pipe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oh no, don\u2019t tell me the woke committee is coming for my open fire now. What\u2019s woke about not liking fires?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I know that tone. You\u2019re about to cancel open fires. Only because it turns out they are a huge cause of pollution and illness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pardon? A study has just forged a link between open fires and dementia, showing that elderly people who had been exposed to open fires throughout their lives showed greater cognitive impairment than those who hadn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Really? I\u2019m afraid so. Professor Barbara Maher of Lancaster University, who led the research, put her findings in the starkest possible terms. \u201cOpen fires are essentially harming friends and family every day,\u201d she said. \u201cWe discovered that the level of exposure to particulate matter from open fires is comparable to and may well exceed the levels people are exposed to from roadside sources.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ah, that\u2019s probably about wood fires. I don\u2019t have one of those. You have a coal fire? That\u2019s even worse! Coal produces 30 micrograms of fine particles per cubic metre, five more than the World Health Organization\u2019s recommended daily limit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t have a coal fire either. I burn peat. Peat? Peat is the worst of all. Peat-burning produces twice the amount of fine particles as coal. It is very, very bad for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How bad? The study found that having a coal fire on the go for five months of the year will expose you to more particles than if you spent an entire year commuting along a busy road for an hour a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But I like open fires. They\u2019re so romantic. They\u2019re not romantic. They\u2019re smelly, dirty and a complete faff to maintain. Could it be, in fact, that what you describe as romance is simply the sensation of iron, platinum and chromium particles entering your body through your olfactory nerves and causing permanent degradation to your brain?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I mean, maybe. Listen, I know it doesn\u2019t have the intimacy of an open fire, but have you ever thought about central heating?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You can\u2019t roast a marshmallow on a radiator. I guess this isn\u2019t the time to tell you that roasting marshmallows can produce acrylamide, a toxic molecule that is thought to be a carcinogen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It definitely isn\u2019t. I\u2019m sorry. I just want you to be safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Christmas won\u2019t be Christmas without an open fire, though. Christmas won\u2019t be Christmas at all this year. It\u2019ll be smaller and more isolated than ever before. So maybe now is the time to try some new traditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Such as what? Not exposing your loved ones to dangerous levels of pollution might be a start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do say: \u201cChestnuts roasting on an open fire \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Don\u2019t say: \u201c\u2026 Jack Frost coughing up his guts.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Name: Open fires. Age: As old as mankind. Appearance: A homely, warming alternative to sucking on a car exhaust pipe. Oh no, don\u2019t tell me the woke committee is coming for my open fire now. What\u2019s woke about not liking fires? I know that tone. You\u2019re about to cancel open fires. Only because it turns […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1433,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[413,490,1024],"class_list":["post-1432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uncategorized","tag-fires-burning","tag-home","tag-ukrgate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ukrgate.com\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ukrgate.com\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ukrgate.com\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukrgate.com\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukrgate.com\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukrgate.com\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukrgate.com\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ukrgate.com\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukrgate.com\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukrgate.com\/eng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}