A Party Surprise

There are surprise parties and then there are party surprises.

We live in a condo with a fireplace prominently positioned in the lobby invoking thoughts of cozy gatherings on cool evenings. Fitted for natural gas, but originally just an empty hearth without the fake, usually ceramic, logs. Concerned that our new neighbors – we were all new neighbors as the building was new – would start burning wood, we passed the hat to raise the money and install a set of decorative fireplace logs.

We were lucky that our neighbors listened to our warning about woodsmoke health risks – most people don’t know and don’t care. But when we underscored the risk as especially harmful to our mature neighbors, many in their 60’s and 70’s, the message took hold.

When we first shopped around for a domicile here in Santa Barbara we noticed that many homes had a backyard fire pit; people thought of it as an amenity. This is a different mindset compared to the Los Angeles basin where we were coming from – wood burning fireplaces were long banned in new construction and the AQMD would issue “No Burn Days” during winter inversions. Unlike L.A., Santa Barbara is blessed with prevailing winds that blow our air pollution to downwind communities. This made house hunting stressful. None of the cute little homes on the Mesa or San Roque came with any assurances that a next door neighbor might not be a wood burner. Even an occasional wood fire nearby would stress us out – a condo would be our solution.

But the downtown core has restaurants and many are following a trend in cuisine, the smoky wood-fired pizza or BBQ. And this can be much worse than a neighbor that burns only on special occasions, these wood burning restaurants are sparking it up, in many cases, 7 days a week, which is especially harmful to their unsuspecting employees.

My wife and I are experts on air pollution. I served 6 years on the Santa Barbara County Air Pollution Control District Hearing Board. We’ve testified before the Coastal Commission many times as burning on the beach is thought of as an amenity. We traveled to Sacramento to successfully defeat a bill that would have enshrined beach bonfires in California’s Health and Safety Codes. Pre-pandemic I would attend the SBCounty APCD Board meetings and present my annual survey of wood burning restaurants – each year there were more dots on the map.

Don’t let me dodge the main issue: woodsmoke is bad for the environment and has many adverse health effects for humans, especially the young and the old. Everyone knows this as it relates to wildfires…

This topic is foremost in my mind today after we attended a 70th birthday party last night. We’d visited before and looked forward to lingering in their beautiful backyard. But when we arrived we were surprised, the gas fire pit had a half-dozen logs piled high; since the fire had just started the impact was minimal, plus there was a breeze blowing, but unlike a fireplace with a chimney to waft the smoke away at tree-top level, this fire was at ground level and would soon flood the backyard with smoke.

It dawned on me that their entire home stinks of wood smoke this morning as doors were open to their gorgeous library. I had to leave, no one noticed as I slipped away, but by the time I reached the car I was coughing. I’ve been over-exposed to woodsmoke, that’s why we became advocates for clean air and against beach bonfires – we once lived at the beach where we suffered from the emissions of 27 fire pits only 500 feet away.

Today we’re clean air advocates and we’re part of the PurpleAir monitoring community. Our PurpleAir monitor is tucked away on our balcony, out of sight, but reporting to the world.

But close to home, we know it’s not easy to share this message. How do you convey your concerns of a smoke-filled backyard party? Last night we dodged the issue and ducked out right as the birthday cake arrived.