DIYbanter - View Single Post

clot

wrote:
On 16 Nov, 21:00, Tim W wrote:

If anyone is still looking at this thread:

If burned my guess is that arsenic oxide will be in the smoke but
I'm not sure how volatile the chromium species will be. Fixed in
the wood the chromium is inert, the trivalent form, as a combustion
product it becomes the hexavalent form which is more easily
assimilated into the body, I'm told. Not only is it a heavy metal
toxin but also believed to be a carcinogen. I wouldn't advocate
burning it in any domestic fire.

It was burned in a closed stove. Just two small bags, none left.

I'm thinking the ash is the biggest problem - likley to get a
facefull of powder brushing it up on a regular basis,

The stove is so efficient that there's very little ash - or smoke.

and then to go and chuck it on
the veggie patch and eat the results...

The metal salts wouldn't be soluble enough to get into the vegetables
in any significant amount - and since we've already achieved our
biblical spans all the future is a bonus :-)

Hopefully most of the smoke is
going up the chimney (though pity the sweep).

As I said, very little smoke. We sweep our own chimneys but don't go
onto the roof to do it ... the soot is contained and not ingested.

Bearing in mind everything which has been said we shan't look for more
modern building materials which are likely to have been treated with
anything. It doesn't seem necessary, there's a lot of wood around,
lots of our friends have trees they want felling and are happy to keep
the logs until we have space to season them.

Thanks to everyone who has offered polite replies.

Good to see you posting.

We seem paranoid about emissions.

When I were a lad, I had a wonderful time playing with mercury - you know
that silvery exciting liqiud that you could splash about and then it would
recombine!

On another group recently (US), I was trying to work out how terrifying
these "nasty" lightless CFLs are due to their mercury content, (I've used
them since the 70s when they costed a fortune but reduced emissions & £s
paid to the ElCo ). From that dialogue, it would appear that the use of CFLs
and the saving on electricity generation (based on their proportion of
generation sources), the mercury issue roughly balances out.

Not having a functioning fireplace, roughly two years out of three, I have a
wonderful bonfire in October that consumes the timber generated in our
garden that I cannot shred for compost, though the larger fractions are
freely given to neighbours who can use them.

Unlike our neighbours, we do not possess a "Compostible Bin" that we could
place in the road for collection as all our organic waste (excluding paper
and that above) is composted and used in the garden.