Lisa Arkin, executive director of Beyond Toxics, recently penned a letter in The Register-Guard discussing the dirty air we’ve all been breathing. Arkin cited some alarming data from LRAPA showing that from November through mid-December our air was healthy to breath roughly one out of every three days.
While Arkin discusses industrial pollution, I wanted to bring the public’s attention to pollution from residential wood-burning heating systems. The top sources of air pollution in the colder months of the year are residential wood-burning heating systems. Burning wood is an archaic way to heat homes and is literally killing us.
If you monitor our air quality at PurpleAir.com, you’ll see as the temperature drops and the wood-burning increases, the particulates flow, filling our air and then our lungs.
The good news is that this is an easy problem to solve. We can phase out wood-burning heating systems, replacing them with systems that won’t foul our own air. We’ll need to subsidize low-income households, but clean air is well worth the cost.
I suggest contacting your elected officials and urging them to create a phase-out program for wood-burning heating systems.
Joshua Welch
Eugene
A Note From the Publisher
Dear Readers,
The last two years have been some of the hardest in Eugene Weekly’s 43 years. There were moments when keeping the paper alive felt uncertain. And yet, here we are — still publishing, still investigating, still showing up every week.
That’s because of you!
Not just because of financial support (though that matters enormously), but because of the emails, notes, conversations, encouragement and ideas you shared along the way. You reminded us why this paper exists and who it’s for.
Listening to readers has always been at the heart of Eugene Weekly. This year, that meant launching our popular weekly Activist Alert column, after many of you told us there was no single, reliable place to find information about rallies, meetings and ways to get involved. You asked. We responded.
We’ve also continued to deepen the coverage that sets Eugene Weekly apart, including our in-depth reporting on local real estate development through Bricks & Mortar — digging into what’s being built, who’s behind it and how those decisions shape our community.
And, of course, we’ve continued to bring you the stories and features many of you depend on: investigations and local government reporting, arts and culture coverage, sudoku and crossword puzzles, Savage Love, and our extensive community events calendar. We feature award-winning stories by University of Oregon student reporters getting real world journalism experience. All free. In print and online.
None of this happens by accident. It happens because readers step up and say: this matters.
As we head into a new year, please consider supporting Eugene Weekly if you’re able. Every dollar helps keep us digging, questioning, celebrating — and yes, occasionally annoying exactly the right people. We consider that a public service.
Thank you for standing with us!
Publisher
Eugene Weekly
P.S. If you’d like to talk about supporting EW, I’d love to hear from you!
jody@eugeneweekly.com
(541) 484-0519
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