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IT’S HARD to believe that the warm, cheery wood fire in the lounge
room—burning a renewable, sustainable solid fuel—is a serious
environmental problem. But recent figures on fine particle emissions in
Australia show just that.

In the middle of winter, temperature inversions cause a build-up of pollution
from wood stoves in chilly regional cities, such as Launceston in northern
Tasmania and Armidale in inland New South Wales. The result can be worse than
central Sydney on a bad day.

It has been known for decades that wood smoke contains nasty compounds,
including carcinogens. Nowadays, however, there is even greater concern about
fine particles, which are associated with various forms of respiratory distress.
In urban areas, it is usually diesel powered trucks and buses which are fingered
as the major source. But Dorothy Robinson, of the Armidale Air Quality Group,
points out that wood stoves are undoing the efforts to reduce the emissions from
buses.

In Melbourne, for instance, the Victorian Environmental Protection Authority
estimates that solid fuel heaters emit 8000 tonnes of fine particles a
year—about twice as much as vehicles. And in Perth in winter, wood stoves
churn out 28 tonnes of particulates a day—nearly ten times as much as
vehicles.

There are other issues. Robinson says wood can contribute substantially to
the greenhouse effect because slow combustion stoves do not burn the fuel
completely through to carbon dioxide. Significant amounts of methane and carbon
monoxide are produced, and these are even more active as greenhouse gases. To
add insult to injury, because wood stoves are hard to light, people tend to keep
them going 24 hours a day, turning down the air flow to reduce the rate of
burning. That also reduces the efficiency of combustion, producing extra
pollution. In contrast, those who use gas heaters usually turn them off when
they go to bed or leave the house. So Robinson calculates that overall, wood
heaters actually emit greater amounts of greenhouse gases than gas heaters.

It is a timely warning because wood stoves are becoming more popular. A
recent survey found 7 per cent of households in south-east Queensland now have
wood heaters—and most of them have been installed in the past five years.
Living in Brisbane I was amazed by that figure, because I know that a well
designed and sensibly oriented house needs little or no heating. At least
someone is aware of the problem. Waverley Council, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs,
recently has banned new wood heaters.

THE extraordinary gesture of John Shine deserves wider recognition. The
director of the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and professor at the
University of NSW has just ploughed A$1 million of his own funds back
into science.

The money was a windfall from the commercialisation of research in which he
was involved more than 20 years ago. It will go towards refurbishment of the
Academy of Science building in Canberra. The story is one that bears
retelling.

In the late 1970s Shine worked with Howard Goodman and Peter Seeberg at the
University of California on the first successful cloning of the gene for human
growth hormone (HGH), used to treat growth disorders in children. Traditionally,
HGH had been extracted from the pituitary glands of cadavers. This gruesome
process was a difficult and expensive way to obtain small quantities of the
hormone. And it was a health hazard. The process is now associated with
transmission of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a close relative of mad cow
disease.

Development of the cloning technique was not only a boon for children, but
became the basis for an industry now worth billions of dollars a year. But the
biotechnology companies which marketed HGH from the cloned gene had never
properly acquired the intellectual property to produce it in bulk. So the
University of California sued them for breach of patent. The case was settled
last year, with a large payment to the university and substantial sums to the
three inventors. Shine decided to put the money from his portion towards
recognising the importance of fundamental research for our future.

The Academy of Science is housed in a unique, dome-shaped building on the
fringes of the Australian National University. Constructed 40 years ago, it is
something of a landmark and has been known to generations of Canberra cabbies as
the Martian Embassy. The Academy had already obtained a grant of A$525
000 toward the costs of repair and renovation from the Council for the Centenary
of Federation. Shine’s generous donation will allow work to begin next month. He
may have won many medals and honours, but Shine deserves even greater
acclamation for this.