Posted on 04/03/2025 5:00:47 PM PDT by dangus
So not too long ago, I moved to Appalachia. For the most part, it's great. Except my wife and son both have been having persistent allergies and lethargy because the locals are CONSTANTLY burning fires in their backyards. They look like campfires: they're not in picnic grills or brick ovens or smokers, but there's always some sort of firesite. They're left unattended almost always.
Can anyone tell me what's going on? My wife thinks it's some sort of folk spirit-cleansing ritual, but these people are all supposedly Christians. Her other notion is its for health, but having the air constantly stink of fire can't be healthy. What gives?
Well, the ones I talk to, and the ones in my immediate area aren’t the ones doing it; I live in a housing complex surrounded by a trailer park. The ones doing it are never around when they do it. One place that has a burn every couple of weeks is a used-car dealership with an acre of brush behind him. I’ve never seen a soul there, but there’s four or five cars that are replaced every few weeks.
But after people here say it’s trash, I’m sure they’re right. I don’t even want to know what a used auto dealer is burning. There’s some new condos being built that had a burn each of the last three days. I’m not thinking I want to go to a work crew doing something patently illegal (and it is illegal to burn construction debris) and tell them I disapprove.
I have no problem with burning plant parts. That’s not what this is.
I was a little ambiguous. The trailer park people don’t burn. And they’re nice, friendly people to a person, at least as many as I’ve ever met. In fact, it’s very *nice* looking housing; my first thought when I saw it was that everyone up North looks down on trailer parks, but this is much nicer than living in an apartment. (That rep is for a reason: there were a few trailer parks up North where I come from and they were nasty; they were one step up from homeless camps.)
Why don’t you ask several of the ones who are burning what they are burning?
It’s been going on all winter and you still don’t know?
Maybe you should move back where you came from.
I don’t know about there, but here out in the country in NC, we burn all the time. Right now I have 8 big piles of leaves, limbs, sticks waiting to burn once they lift the burn ban. And I have enough more of all that to refill all my piles about 4 or 5 more times. We also burn paper trash. Have to take our trash to a county site, no trash pick up unless you want to pay for it. But around here, people burn all the time. Oh and shooting too. We have 12 1/2 acres and have a “range” set up down back near our woods. Have lots of local cops come by to sight in their guns when they get a new one. Neighbors do a lot of shooting/target practice, too. A good thing about that is not a lot of crime here since word on the street is most everybody around here has guns....and use them! haha
they’re burning their trash ... when i was a tyke, i remember my father doing that in semi-rural North Carolina around 1957 ...
Well, the five county dumps are all free. And you may just have explained the one thing I couldn’t understand about the county statistics: This county has super, super, super high lung cancer rates. I couldn’t figure out why because not THAT many people smoke. I think more people smoked up North where I’m from. These fires ain’t leaves and branches. But if these folks are burning trash? That explains it
Move back.
Don’t be a Karen
I second that.
You better move if you don’t find it healthy. Obviously, they enjoy it and should never change due to new people moving in on their turf.
And keep a close eye on pets because He Who Rattles The Woods demands sacrifices to prevent scabies outbreaks and sour milk...or worse.
They’re burn barrels. I can’t believe your wife thought they were folk rituals...smh
As to lung cancer risk factors, modest older houses in the South often relied on wood cooking stoves and traditional fireplaces. Both generated smoke and pollutants in household air, especially before electricity became widely available.
In addition, regulation and practice in the South long tolerated higher levels of cancer causing pollutants from incinerators and coal plants.
For example, for decades, a few blocks from the Florida state capitol building in Tallahassee, there was a close knit and fondly remembered black community known as Smokey Hollow.
Located in a wide stream gully, Smokey Hollow got its name from a near constant blanket of smoke. That smoke was generated by wood cooking stoves, passing trains that burned coal, from Tallahassee's nearby municipal incinerator, and by a nearby coal gasification plant.
Eventually, Smokey Hollow was bought up for expansion of Florida's state office buildings. The site of the coal gasification plant had to be declared a toxic waste due to accumulated creosote contamination.
Since lung cancer usually takes decades to develop, the South's higher levels of air pollution in the past continue to generate cases. The effect seems to be a wave of lung cancer cases after early deaths from heart disease were prevented by modern treatments.
In a way, it is good news that people in Appalachia now outlive heart disease and then suffer from lung cancer due to long ago pollution that has been remedied. The lung cancer cases seem odd because their causes are (mostly) no longer extant and obvious.
Its a cultural thing. We all do it in the N GA mountains too. We like fires. What can I say. 😐
Am I the only one to suggest pyromania?
Used to live in Richmond Hill Ga, Helicopters flying overhead and the firing sounds of Bradleys, Abrams and Artillery could be heard on occasion, when the weather was right. Turn the TV up a little and all was well. Once in a great while there would be a low flying C130 or some variant going in at night. ( Ft. Stewart was just down the road, and Hunter AAF was just up the road).
Well, there’s no barrels. These are open, unprotected fires.
... and to be fair, locals have talked a LOT about old superstitions.
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