EPA will get another three years to belatedly complete a makeover of its troubled emission standards program for new wood stoves, under a lawsuit settlement made final this week.
The newly signed consent decree gives EPA until December 2027 to make any changes to the existing New Source Performance Standards for new wood stove models, followed by a December 2028 deadline for revisiting the portion of the regulations dealing with two other types of wood-fired heating appliances: forced-air furnaces and hydronic heaters.
Millions of people rely on those devices to keep homes warm. Their homey image notwithstanding, wood stoves are a major source of the fine particles often dubbed soot. Inhalation is tied to an array of respiratory and cardiovascular ills, as well as higher odds of early death.
In recent years, EPA’s program has been the subject of scathing reviews by a Boston-based consortium of state air pollution regulators and the agency’s inspector general, both of which found that it gave stove buyers no assurance that new models actually meet the existing soot emission limits.
