Ongoing community education, incentives for heating replacement or wood heater surrender, and legislation to require the removal of non-compliant wood heaters when a house was sold were some measures to mitigate adverse health impacts from wood heater smoke, said Sally Talbot, Parliamentary Secretary representing the Minister for the Environment, in the Western Australian Legislative Council on 14 August 2007.
Policy paper details proposed solutions: Answering a series of questions, Talbot said: "The wood heater policy options paper was released on 23 May. This document includes details of the names and types of particles in the air from wood heaters. This information is detailed in Appendix A: Chemical properties of wood heater emissions. The wood heater policy options paper details the costs of adverse health impacts from the use of wood heaters attributed to wood smoke emissions in the Perth metropolitan region. It also details recommended actions to reduce these health impacts. These actions are ongoing community education, incentives for heating replacement or wood heater surrender, and legislation to include a requirement that at time of sale of a house, non-compliant wood heaters must be removed. The policy paper is still open for comment until 3 September 2007."
Health costs calculated in policy options paper: "The wood heater policy options paper includes details of calculations of health costs attributed to wood smoke emissions in the Perth metropolitan region," Talbot said. "The rationale and factors considered to calculate this figure are outlined in Section 2.3 of the paper. In addition to this, further information is available in a supplementary document titled Cost-Benefit Analysis of Wood-Smoke Reduction in Perth, which is available on DEC’s website."
Reference: Hon Giz Watson, Member for North Metropolitan, AG, Hon Sally Talbot, Parliamentary Secretary representing the Minister for the Environment, Member for South West, ALP, Legislative Council of Western Australia, Hansard, 14 August 2007. A copy of these proceedings can be accessed at
http://www.parliament.wa.gov.au
Erisk Net, 22/8/2007