We live next to a canal boat mooring and experience off-the-charts levels of air pollution from the boats on cold winter evenings, as the boats are right below our windows. We have to keep our windows closed almost all of the time in the winter and even then we get a lot of smoke inside.
Our daughter has quite severe asthma, for which she has been hospitalised 5 times in the last year, and the smoke certainly doesn't help that. But I'm mostly concerned about the longer term effects of the smoke on our children, and others in the neighbourhood. Many of the boaters burn construction waste, old decking, furniture, fence posts etc. Burning treated wood like this is known to produce high levels of lead, arsenic and dioxin, which are all extremely toxic and accumulate over time.
Obviously the boaters need to be able to heat their boats in the winter but there really needs to be a way of meeting their heating needs that doesn't involve burning wood and coal, and certainly not treated wood.
Sam, Oxfordshire*
*name has been changed