Residential Wood Burning: A Major Source of Fine Particulate Matter in Alpine Valleys in Central Europe

Abstract

Residential wood burning is one of the important sources of ambient particulate matter (PM) in many European regions. Besides total PM, residential wood burning is at many locations an important source of other air pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), benzene, particulate organic carbon (OC), and black carbon (BC), especially in regions such as the Alpine region, where wood fuel is, on one hand, traditionally used for domestic heating during the cold season in small stoves and, on the other hand, meteorological conditions during winter are often favourable for accumulation of wood smoke in a shallow boundary layer. As a consequence, wood burning in the Alpine region can be the dominating source of PM, OC, and BC during the cold season. This is true for both larger cities and small villages in rural areas. The absolute contribution of wood burning emissions to particulate air pollutants tends in rural environments to be even larger than in urban areas. This chapter gives an overview about the results of studies on ambient particulate pollutants from residential wood burning in the Alpine region.