Barbecue Bad for the Lungs

[Varmint]

A cover story in today's Raleigh News & Observer focuses on the air pollution of Davidson County, North Carolina (the county where Lexington is located), and local officials think that the high number of barbecue restaurants in the region has caused this problem.

Davidson leaders are puzzled. After all, cities such as Raleigh, Charlotte and Winston-Salem passed muster.

"What makes us different?" County Manager Robert Hyatt asked. His answer: "There are 15 or 20 barbecue restaurants that burn with wood."

One is Smokey Joe's, which is near an air monitor in Lexington that flunked, Hyatt said.

The City of Raleigh and many other municipalities across the country have very strict emission standards that limit the ability of barbecue joints to have open pits.

Damn, I hope they don't have to make changes in Lexington.

[Andrew Fenton]

Well, I'd hope they'd be able to make a religious exemption to the emissions standards. I mean, really.

[Milt]

Davidson County's solution is so very simple. They must relocate their air monitor. I am sure the Chamber of Commerce would support this solution.

[slkinsey]

I have a hard time believing that 20 wood-burning barbecue pits produce an appreciable amount of air pollution in a city of that size. That said, barbecue smoke is particularly troublesome because it is a grease-laden smoke, and this is the worst kind of particulate. There should be some relatively measures that can be implemented that will cut down the particulates considerably -- especially when compared to the current measures which are, well, nothing.

[bbq4meanytime]

The problem is the petroluem-burning automobiles and trucks, not the BBQ pits. Let's not lose sight of that. Several years back before I left California, I remember Los Angeles County talking about banning charcoal grills for the same reason.

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Edited June 15, 2004 by bbq4meanytime (log)

[Varmint]

Davidson County is a non-attainment area for particulate matter. Mecklenburg and Wake Counties are attainment areas. Here are the 2002 populations of these counties:

Mecklenburg: 737,950

Wake:675,518

Davidson: 151,238

The traffic in Mecklenburg and Wake Counties is awful. I don't think that we can truly blame the cars for Davidson Counties non-attainment for particulate matter.

[bbq4meanytime]

Hmmmm, you ever see the NY and New Engalnd countryside in the fall? Cords upon cords of wood stacked roof-high ready for burning in the woodstoves to supplement the oil-fired heat. I would guess that in the aggregate, more homes burn wood in these rurual areas than the BBQ pits. As part of a small start-up company in the early 90s, we did a nationwide project on identifying non-attainment areas and many of these areas were not included.

Particulates are mostly produced by diesel engines, does lot of trucking go through Davidson?

Edited June 15, 2004 by bbq4meanytime (log)

[Fat Guy]

I'd be interested to learn how much actual output there is from a single barbecue establishment. Surely there's something you can clip onto a smokestack in order to determine this, and then you can multiply by 20. My guess is it's not all that significant, but if it is it should be easily remedied by the installation of filters, scrubbers, and whatnot. It will raise the cost of barbecue somewhat, and will be particularly burdensome on smaller operators, though, so given how important a cultural tradition is the local authorities should probably focus on other sources of pollution first.

[JosephB]

Or has the owner of Totonno's pizza in Brooklyn, NY put it to me when I asked him about the pollution caused by coal-fired ovens. To paraphrase, he said, yeah, OK, it causes a little pollution. But would you rather live three days longer instead of eating coal-fired pizza?

[Varmint]

It'll be interesting to see the EPA's results with the 5 extra air monitors. Much of Davidson County is rural, so I hope these monitors are representative of the county as a whole, and not just the Lexington area.

[Fat Guy]

In the meantime, businesses might consider making their own cases stronger by voluntarily adopting environmentally friendly technologies. In many cases, this kind of gesture has strong marketing benefits. The urban barbecuers have already figured out all the technology for having wood-fired pits with nearly zero exhaust. It's expensive to do it if you need to invent the technology and take the exhaust up 220 feet to clear the surrounding apartment buildings. But now that it has all been worked out, it can't be nearly as expensive or difficult to reproduce the essential elements in a rural or industrial area where you only need to go up 20 feet and you don't need to get anywhere near 100% efficacy. Ed Mitchell seems to have pulled it off in Wilson -- maybe some of the folks from Lexington should drive over and have a look at the hoods and filters he uses.

[Pan]

Last Sunday, when I approached 26 St. at the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party, I had a serious allergic reaction to all the smoke and coughed on and off for the rest of the evening. But you know what's probably worse than barbecue smoke? That awful charcoal lighter fluid some of my neighbors use fairly often for their own "barbecues." That stuff gets into my apartment no matter what I do, and the only thing I can do about it is put my HEPA filter up to a "high" setting, but it really doesn't help much. I feel like that stuff poisons me, and I wish it were banned.

[hollywood]

The problem is the petroluem-burning automobiles and trucks, not the BBQ pits. Let's not lose sight of that. Several years back before I left California, I remember Los Angeles County talking about banning charcoal grills for the same reason.

edit typos

Funny you should mention this. Los Angeles has not implemented any thing like this yet. Just the other day I had a tritip sandwich at BBQ King which is just outside of downtown Los Angeles. They had half a dozen of those oil drum grill/smokers going full tilt. Smelled good/bad depending on your viewpoint. Nary a filter in sight. And their sweet/spicy sauce is really good.

[tommy]

everyone knows that smoking kills.

[hollywood]

everyone knows that smoking kills.

Love it when you get ironic.

[Stone]

BBQs don't kill people. People kill people.

It's much more efficient that way.

[a61morris]

I've worked in Davidson County for the past 12 years and would wager that the furniture plants and textile mills which have been the economic backbone of this county for the last century have done a lot more environmental damage than Mr. Monk and his barbecue brethren in Lexington. At any rate, I would rather smell the restaurants' emissions than those of the factories or mills.

Of course, as the factories and mills continue to downsize and outsource, there may not be many left to blame for our air pollution woes. The Triad in general has become semi-notorious for poor air quality. I seem to recall several reports from the Greensboro News and Record (claims to be a newspaper) that the EPA or someone had ranked us among the twenty urban areas with the worst air quality in these whole United States. If memory serves, we were ranked worse than even L.A. I'll have to research that and see if I can dig up an article for verification.

Dave