I have lived in Hoquiam for three months. I walk several miles a day between the Hoquiam and Aberdeen libraries.

This community had the most sublime views, the cleanest, clearest, freshest air of anyplace I have ever lived, until the cold snap.

Now, there are residential chimneys spewing out thick smoke, like the foulest 19th century factories, on every single block in town.

Waves of smoke descend in the cold air to street level where people walk.

In cold weather, the air of this community in the evening is as bad as that of Beijing, Calcutta or Ankara, where one can breathe the equivalent of two packs of cigarettes in a single day.

It would be very easy to require that folks with wood-burning fireplaces have a “chimney sweep” pass a rag through their flues before the device is fired up for the season and very easy to require that dry wood be burned or wood that produces the least smoke.

Residential communities throughout California have banned wood-burning fireplaces altogether due to their contribution to air pollution. A single particle of wood smoke is large enough to crash the hard drive in your computer. Each chimney across Aberdeen-Hoquiam emits a trillion such particles each evening.

Let’s give our lungs a break and require a flue-cleaning and proper wood for every fireplace.

Jim Blake

Hoquiam