In the UK recently, there has been a designation of 'smoke-free' areas, specifically as a result of research done on the harm to health caused by PM2.5 particul

In the UK recently, there has been a designation of 'smoke-free' areas, specifically as a result of research done on the harm to health caused by PM2.5 particulates. It's become quite popular for middle-class homes to fit multifuel stoves (i.e., wood, coal, whatever) in order to heat the main room of their house. Largely because they look nice but there is some argument to be made that with the cost of living increasing, especially around energy, that it is somewhat economical to do so - particularly if you have access to free/foraged wood. The idea is you can still use these stoves so long as the fuel you are burning is considered 'smokeless', which in reality isn't actually smokeless but refers to wood that has a moisture content between 15-20%, as well as a number of commercially-available fuels you can buy from large hardware stores like B&Q and some supermarkets. Another development that personally affects me is that local councils are now able to start enforcing this 'smoke-free' thing on owners of narrowboats[1]. For those that don't know, the UK has a 2000 mile network of inland canals on which thousands of us live, in canal barges of about 7ft beam. In the winter, a lot of these boats' primary method of heating our homes is using multifuel stoves. It's an itinerant lifestyle that can be hard at times but incredibly freeing and requires one to live somewhat more in tune with the seasons. A lot of boaters don't have a ton of money and primarily fuel our stoves with foraged wood at varying levels of seasoning (the process of drying wood to reduce moisture content and make it burn better and cleaner). For instance, this year I got a knock on the roof of my boat by a tree surgeon, informing me we needed to move our boat as they had to chop down an ash tree that had succumbed to ash dieback [2]. I asked if I could take some of the wood and he said no problem, saves them a bit of work getting rid of it. And that's now my wood for the winter. We are, of course, aware of the health hazards of groups of boats burning not the best wood, but a large percentage of live-aboard boaters really don't have any other option. Sorry, not particularly relevant to the article posted but I thought it worth mentioning that there are cases where not burning things to stay warm in winter is not an option for some groups of people. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrowboat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrowboat [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hymenoscyphus_fraxineus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hymenoscyphus_fraxineus