In spring, a man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love - no make that burning. And I’m not talking about burning love.

On the first clear dry spring day, this man’s annual ritual begins. He gathers up branches from around his yard, rakes up the past autumn’s fallen leaves, strikes a match and torches the pile.

Little does he know about the effect the burning has on his neighbours. Almost always, he doesn’t even inquire if outdoor burning smoke will bother his surrounding residents.

Why is outdoor burning a concern? The smoke from burning of organic vegetation contains many air pollutants. These include carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxides, nitrogen dioxides, and methane.

The really toxic ingredients of the smoke include acetaldehyde, acrolein, benzene, formaldehyde, methyl chloride, toluene, xylenes, n-hexane, and 1,3 butadiene. Google any of these chemicals and you‚ll learn your backyard burning smoke is a major health hazard.

This smoke also produces tiny particles - up to 30 times smaller than the width of a human hair - that are inhaled deep into the lungs. Our body’s defenses can’t protect us from them, so these particles can cause harmful chemical and structural changes to human lung tissue.

Outdoor burning smoke is especially harmful to anyone suffering from diabetes, cystic fibrosis, chronic heart disease, as well as inflammatory lung conditions like asthma, emphysema, and bronchitis.

Smoke from backyard burning rarely just rises straight up into the air. It is buffeted by late day downdrafts or blown across a neighbor’s property by a prevailing breeze. The smoke that a backyard burner creates almost always escapes the confines of the burner’s property line.

In the United States, a federal appeals court has stopped the burning of grasslands in Idaho, a practice that regularly clouded the air in the Creston Valley in Canada every summer and fall.

Idaho farmers like to burn stubble off bluegrass fields after harvest because they believe the practice increases seed yields and extends the life of the fields. They say burning their field stubble is an inexpensive method of renewing fields and clearing weeds without using chemicals.

When residents suffering health effects (one woman died after inhaling smoke) from the burning started to sue farmers, the state of Idaho unbelievably passed a law giving grass seed growers immunity from lawsuits if they followed all rules and regulations on burning.

In 2005, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency upheld the right of Idaho farmers to burn, but a recent decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that approval as legally unsustainable.

The neighbouring state of Washington began phasing out grass burning in 1996 because of public health concerns. In 1998, an alternative to burning grass-seed fields was certified as economically viable, meaning that growers would still be able to grow grass seed profitably without burning. The alternative was using normal farm equipment to rake and bale the grass stubble. To reach this conclusion, scientists evaluated about 300 pieces of research, while economists and agronomists at Washington State University conducted a thorough cost-benefit analysis.

The WSU study concluded that public health benefits from cleaner air outweighed increased costs to the grass seed industry for bailing their fields by nearly $3 million a year.

So why would someone deliberately harm the health of a neighbor? Why do we continue to allow backyard burning?

The alternative to burning is simply to take your garden and yard waste to your nearest waste disposal facility.

The Regional District of Kootenay Boundary accepts yard and garden waste at no charge.

In the Central Okanagan Regional District, residents can drop off their yard waste and prunings up to 20 cm (8 inches) in diameter and weighing less than 250 kg (550 lbs) free of charge year round at local landfills. This includes grass, leaves, pine needles and cones, windfall fruit and garden plants. Yard waste and prunings weighing more than 250 kg will be charged $25 per tonne, regardless of origin.

In the CORD, there are even yard waste pick-ups every spring and fall for residents on municipal or regional garbage collection.

The Regional District of Central Kootenay is not as enlightened as the RDKB or CORD. It charges for the disposal of organic material ($5.00 per pickup truck load) perhaps explaining why many more rural residents there continue to burn.

Spring is supposed to be in the air. Instead smoke is in the air. Burning leaves, branches, and grass is dangerous to your neighbour’s health as well as your own. Have you forgotten the old adage “love thy neighbour”?

Michael Jessen is an environmental consultant who specializes in helping individuals, businesses and communities make sustainable environmental decisions. He can be reached by telephone at 250-229-5632 or by e-mail at zerowaste@shaw.ca. His business Zero Waste Solutions has an award-winning web site.