Anyone wants to make a thread here on the long and the short carbon cycle? (The small being trees, animals etc growing old, rot, release the carbon, the long being trees, animals etc growing old, getting sealed under layers of soil and finally converted to coal or oil/gas?)
Not meaning to take anything away from the toxicologi part but in a whole lot of places wood is still an energy source and would need to be replaced. Where I live we use (hydroelectric mostly) electricity for heating mostly which seems liek a genuine waste of high value electricity.
You're right in that wood-burning is carbon-neutral over human lifespans, making it far better than, say, coal-burning power plants in terms of emissions.
However, in the short term, wood-burning is problematic much like smog from driving is problematic. If cars burned nothing but renewable vegetable oil, and drive in places like Los Angeles the same amount that people drive today, smog would still be a problem for human health.
I think the article overstates the risk a bit; high-efficiency wood stoves burn off much of the harmful gas and particulates and don't have visible emissions when they are working properly, for example. But that's not the point of the article.
Not meaning to take anything away from the toxicologi part but in a whole lot of places wood is still an energy source and would need to be replaced. Where I live we use (hydroelectric mostly) electricity for heating mostly which seems liek a genuine waste of high value electricity.