Modern wood heaters are so polluting that in the mining town of Muswellbrook, where open-cut mines supply coal to power stations generating enough electricity for 3.25 million homes, chemical fingerprinting showed a few hundred wood heaters are the major source of PM2.5 pollution (62% in winter, 30% year round).  Woodsmoke pollution was also identified as a major source of wintertime pollution in Liverpool, Sydney. An evening's wood heating emits as many toxic chemicals as in the smoke from a quarter of a million cigarettes.

NSW Chief Medical Officer Kerry Chant said wood heaters are so detrimental to health she supports banning and phasing them out in built-up urban areas. There are major flaws in the current standard-setting process because changes cannot be made without the approval of the wood heating industry. 

We therefore urge the 15 Dec 2015 Australian Environment Ministers' Meeting to: 
1) reject the current flawed "standards" set by the wood heating industry
2) set up a committee of health and epidemiological experts to find the best possible solution to the current $20 billion health costs of wood heater pollution.
3) endorse a National Clean Air Agreement, with appropriate support and leadership, to implement $3.6 billion savings from other pollution measures* that together with the $20 billion savings from cleaning up woodsmoke pollution would allow Australia to implement a 6 ug/m3 PM2.5 standard and avoid 700 premature deaths per year
4) investigate other cost-effective ways to reduce pollution and health costs, many of which will also reduce global warming from lower methane and black carbon emissions.

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* Other-pollution reduction measures with savings of $3.6 billion identified by the National Environment Protection Committee were: adopting US standards for non-road diesels, international best practice for controlling PM emissions from mines, US2010 emissions standards for outboards and watercraft, and US phase 2 gardening emissions standards.