5 Woodpile Dangers That Can Put You in the Hospital. Number 3 Grows on Half of America's Firewood

Tomorrow morning you'll carry an armload in with your gloves still in your back pocket. There are five things in an ordinary American woodpile that put people in hospital beds every winter, and four of them you can find in ninety seconds with a flashlight. In 1977 my saw partner Manny cleared a fence line, piled the vines with the deadwood, and burned it. He stood in that smoke about twenty minutes. Two days later they took him to Elkins with his face swollen shut and his throat closing. He never touched a leaf. I'm Harlan Sawyer. Forty-two years in the timber, 1969 to 2011. The five: pressure treated lumber and how to spot it by the rows of slits (arsenic until the end of 2003) - what lives in the bottom two rows, and the eight-dollar fix - the hairy vine, which is poison ivy on a dead log, still active for years, and what burning it does to your throat - the white bloom on wood stored indoors - and the ash bucket, which isn't in the pile at all, and is the one the fire departments write up every January. Number three is on about half the cords I've split in the last ten years, on my own ridge, on trees I cut myself. You cannot see it once the bark is off. Tell me your state and whether you've ever found a hairy vine on your own firewood. I think most of us have burned one without knowing. Stack it dry, friend. It keeps. Sources mentioned: EPA (never burn treated, painted or stained wood; CCA removed from residential use at the end of 2003), CDC (never burn poison ivy; urushiol stays active on dead wood for years). Ash: metal can with a metal lid, outdoors on dirt or concrete, four days minimum, and a carbon monoxide detector in the sleeping hall. I'm not a doctor. A darkening bite, a reaction to smoke, or a chest that won't clear is a doctor's business, not mine. #firewood #woodstove #poisonivy #woodheat #homestead #oldways