Put down the matches and back away from the fireplace, granny. "Fine particulates" released by efforts to stay warm in Fairbanks, Alaska pose a health hazard:
The Fairbanks North Star Borough, a county area roughly the size of New Jersey with under 100,000 population, has been under the EPA gun since the agency ratcheted down its soot standards in 2008. Along with 14 other cities and 53 other counties that were not then on the EPA’s “non-attainment area” list, the Fairbanks North Star Borough is under orders to clean up its air or face fines and a “compliance plan” imposed by EPA. In efforts to meet the federal mandate, borough politicians attempted to regulate wood burning.
In yet another example of why government agencies and their unelected bureaucrats require enhanced scrutiny and enhanced methods of ensuring accountability by the elected officials who created these monsters, the Environmental Protection Agency once again volunteers for the limelight: senior agency administrators have not only established "alias" email accounts in order to circumvent rules requiring retention of communications, but they've established a simple means for circumventing Freedom of Information Act requests for documents.
“Directly challenging the EPA on its fine particulate matter claims has been difficult as the agency has secured the key data in the hands of private university academics, who are out of congressional and Freedom of Information Act reach,” says Milloy. “The EPA is currently stonewalling an effort by Rep. Andy Harris, Maryland Republican, of the House Science Committee, to obtain the data in question.”
According to EPA bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., burning wood is very bad - but so is burning coal, oil, or natural gas. And no, you can't see their data.
