SPLIT ATOMS, NOT WOOD

We have been writing about it for years; now the ever alert Time magazine (1/16/84) has discovered it, too: pollution from wood burning is a distinct health hazard. (Everything is crumbling: no longer can one rely even on Time to censor or distort.) Nevertheless, there are better sources: for example, a Home Fuel: A Source of Air Pollution (Amer. Council on Science & Health, 1981; 47 Maple St., Summit, NJ 07901; $2), and of course, the Cumulative AtE Index 1973-83 ($14).

And there are some new developments, too: A 50 MW power plant consuming 500,000 tons of nearby forest a year, has gone on line in Burlington, Vermont. Tests have revealed that the concentration of benzopyrene, a known carcinogen, in rural Burlington now matches that of industrial Boston. "Odor is a powerful stimulant that conjures up a lot of images," says a Burlington official (Houston Post 3/27/83). "Like sitting in front of a fire with a girl at a ski lodge. That's what the odor of wood smoke says. It doesn't say 'carcinogen'." [Did you think flacks could only invent imagined health hazards where there are none? No: their wizardry can spirit real ones away, too.]

The Dept. of Health's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (10/14/83) reports that lignite fly ash, especially in connection with the use of fluidized beds (one of Lovins' pets), is more effective than other fly ash in inducing cancer and genetic mutations. That coal ash contains carcinogens and mutagens has, of course, long been known to all but editors of environmental columns, and illustrates one of the dilemmas of modern technology: When little Texans are born with two heads, how will we know whether the culprit was lignite, coal, wood or uranium? (Texas uses them all.)

But the hell with health hazards, as the environmentalists say (with actions if not words), what about cash? Taxachusetts sports a 35% Residential Solar Tax Credit, higher (we believe) than corresponding rip-offs in Colorado, California and other states where the poor are made to subsidize the well-to-do. Warren Brookes, an honest journalist (yes!) shows in the Boston Herald (9/28/83) that to profit from the tax break, you must be in the top 21% in taxes to let the lower 79% pay for your welfare. That's the heart of "environmentalism:" if the Sierra Club were honest, its motto would be "Let the riff-raff pay."

In California, for example, it works like this:

Let us help you with the fine print: "Offered only to California residents... [with] net worth, exclusive of home, furnishings and automobiles of at least $250,000 and gross income in excess of $65,000 in 1981, 82, 83..."