I just got around to reading this past Sunday's Dollar Stretcher, and in the article on coal stoves, I happened on this sentence: "Coal is clean burning and plentiful, with prices lower than other fuel sources."

OK, I'm willing to grant that coal is (for the time being) plentiful and cheap. But where on earth did she get "clean burning"? Compared to what? Coal is widely regarded as the dirtiest fuel source out there--producing not just CO2 (burning anything does that) but also nitrous oxides, sufur dioxide, carbon monoxide, mercury, VOCs (which form ozone, the major component of smog), and soot. So in what sense is it "clean"?

The article quickly moved on from the why of burning coal to the how, so it never provided any information to back up that statement. So I have no idea on what she's basing her view that coal is a clean source of heat. Did anyone out there get it? If so, can someone explain it to me?

I noticed that, too, and I can tell you from experience, that burning coal is not "clean," in any sense of the word. Unless you have converters, filters and very tall smoke stacks like a commercial building might have, coal is dirty and it stinks. It does, however, beat wood for BTUs as it's very dense. Hard coal is, anyway. Soft coal is even dirtier, in my experience.

Coal is not a renewable fuel, but then, neither is gas or oil. It's fairly cheap even if it isn't easy to come by everywhere. It takes a special stove to burn in because wood stoves usually have too big of a box to transfer heat efficiently to the stove walls and from there to the room. You have to have coal grates, too, because coal will burn through wood grates quickly.

I know that some people like it, but it would not be my first choice of fuel.

I was wondering about that "clean-burning" comment myself; it sounded more like something that belonged on a description of a gas stove than a coal stove.  The one thing my house doesn't have that I'd like (not need... just was looking for when I bought it) is a fireplace, so every so often I look at wood, pellet. and gas stoves instead; with Denver's clean air restrictions, I haven't even considered a coal stove.

Coal may be economical in mining areas, but cheap it "ain't".  Nor is it clean--it is filthy from corruption, polluted with the blood of poor people who had to take the only jobs they could get, from corporate structures run by heartless monsters.

Mining is the single most hazardous occupation in America.  Coal pollutes ground water in the process of mining, from its fumes, and from coal ash spills such as the three recently in the Southeast.  If you want a serious horror story which will leave you mothers of children with nightmares for months, google up Ash Spill Wales.   If you are a working man or live on a working man's salary, google Bloody Harlan and discover how management at its worst treats workers. If you want further reading on the subject, find Rep. Harry Caudill's Night Comes to the Cumberlands and learn how Big Coal controls government.  

Coal tars are carcinogenic, and the smoke creates emphysema over the course of years. It burns hot, and will burn out the bottom of your wood stove.

littlepitcher:

Coal may be economical in mining areas, but cheap it "ain't".  Nor is it clean--it is filthy from corruption, polluted with the blood of poor people who had to take the only jobs they could get, from corporate structures run by heartless monsters.

Maybe not all of them, but I do recall a political cartoon featuring a certain well-known individual, who is associated with a certain well-known energy company (I won't name either the person or the company because I don't want to open up a can of political worms), as a boy, opening up his Christmas stocking and exclaiming, "Oh boy--coal!"

True.  In many mining areas, the child will get a stocking full of "clinkers"--coal ash and residue--from Santa if he's been bad.  I made a little extra trouble for myself after a member of a family notorious for political corruption was interviewed after the big ash spill:  I wrote the publication  and stated that Santa had sent him a big stocking full of clinkers for his proportional misbehavior.  This hit home, since the ash spill occurred so soon after Christmas.