The use of fireplaces is quite common in Israel, despite the domestic and environmental pollution that burning wood for home heating produces. This multidisciplinary theoretical and empirical research, funded by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, has three main goals:

1) a systematic review of different methods and challenges in pollution measurement;

2) Collecting preliminary data on fireplace usage patterns in different localities, including measuring pollution levels and the presence of polluting substances, in light of existing epidemiological knowledge;

3) Examining the set of social, cultural and economic factors of the use of fireplaces or the avoidance and opposition to this use in Israel. Together, the mapping of the uses and the sampling of the pollution levels in the residential areas of the study participants will lay an initial infrastructure for the development of legislative policy and behavioral change.

From a scientific point of view, as part of the research we will examine the standards for home heaters that run on wood, the standards and the medical recommendations for exposure to pollutants emitted from burning wood and examine their compatibility. Burning wood emits many pollutants, and as such, must be regulated. The primary need for regulation is health related and is designed to ensure that the air we breathe is not significantly harmful to health. That is, ideally, the regulation on the emissions of any device, including a wood stove, should be linked to health standards. For example - the concentration of the emitted particles should be such that it does not pose a respiratory risk to the population that is affected by it. The proposed study will examine whether this is the actual situation regarding heating with fireplaces. In addition, we will examine the consistency of the regulation for fireplaces with the regulation on other pollutants (transportation, industry), and we will examine the situation in the world in a comparative manner. If necessary, we will propose steps to improve the compatibility between the engineering standards and the health standards.

Sociologically, the proposed study looks at energy and air resources as a social relationship, which will be analyzed through the sociology of resources and energy consumption. This aspect of the research will focus on the set of uses, that is, the characteristics and motives of use, in three types of sites where fireplaces are used intensively, sites that have distinct environmental, demographic and socioeconomic characteristics (mixed cities, suburban settlements and rural settlements). The research tools will include usage and attitude surveys (which will be distributed both on social networks and in the settlements in the research sample, semi-structured in-depth interviews and observations in private homes, as well as focus groups with users and opponents of the use of fireplaces.

The results of the study will promote the formulation of an agreed protocol for measuring domestic and environmental pollution caused by heating by burning wood, and will identify the key health, demographic and social variables associated with the consumption of this energy or alternatively, its avoidance and active resistance to it. The conclusions of the research will refer to the desired legislation (either restrictions or, alternatively, a complete ban; and this while referring to the local and national dimension) and will make it possible to promote behavioral change.