# Burning furniture or books for heat
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burning-furniture-or-books-for-heat/382363
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [November 30, 2006, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burning-furniture-or-books-for-heat/382363 "2006-11-30T18:51:08Z")
**Posts on this page:** 14
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@XaMcQ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XaMcQ)
#### Post date: [November 30, 2006, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burning-furniture-or-books-for-heat/382363/1 "2006-11-30T18:51:08Z")
This comes up pretty frequently in fiction, ‘The Day After Tomorrow’, for example, where people are trapped someplace with a fireplace but no firewood, so they break up wooden furniture and toss books on the fire to keep warm. This might be pretty safe with antiques, but most modern furniture is made with a lot of chemicals, and I assume books are treated with preservatives as well. I am thinking burning them might throw off toxic fumes along with any life-saving heat.
Yes? No? Would the fumes mostly leave with the smoke? What is safe to burn in this scenerio?
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### Author:  [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)
#### Post date: [November 30, 2006, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burning-furniture-or-books-for-heat/382363/2 "2006-11-30T20:15:33Z")
I don’t know about your grandpa, but mine shellacked the hell out of every stick of furniture that came his way. I wouldn’t burn any of it.
I understand your use of _The Day After Tomorrow_ as an example, but it’s so scientifically inadequate and inconsistent that the idea of burning furniture and books is among the least of its problems.
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### Author:  [@Ludy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludy)
#### Post date: [November 30, 2006, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burning-furniture-or-books-for-heat/382363/3 "2006-11-30T20:23:19Z")
What would be a better idea is to burn the wood framing of any upholstered furniture. It would not have been painted or shellacked and probably a nice sturdy wood.
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### Author:  [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)
#### Post date: [November 30, 2006, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burning-furniture-or-books-for-heat/382363/4 "2006-11-30T20:29:42Z")
I plan to burn all my unfinished pine shelving from IKEA.
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### Author:  [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)
#### Post date: [November 30, 2006, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burning-furniture-or-books-for-heat/382363/5 "2006-11-30T22:14:47Z")
[QUOTE=Shoshana]
I plan to burn all my unfinished pine shelving from IKEA.
[/QUOTE]
Particle board, MDF and plywood all have glues and resins (notabley urea- or phenol-formaldehyde) in them that would tend to make for hazardous fumes when burned, releasing such lovely substances as formaldehyde and cyanide.
Naturally, almost all contemporary furniture now is made of nothing but these materials.
As \*\*Ludy \*\* said, burn the frames of upholstered furniture - it’s likely to be something like maple or oak and unfinished.
Books are usually not treated with anything other than ink, so they’d be OK to burn. Just watch out for loose flying pages.
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### Author:  [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)
#### Post date: [November 30, 2006, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burning-furniture-or-books-for-heat/382363/6 "2006-11-30T22:18:15Z")
[QUOTE=Shoshana]
I don’t know about your grandpa, but mine shellacked the hell out of every stick of furniture that came his way. I wouldn’t burn any of it.
[/QUOTE]
Shellac is [said](http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-shellac.htm) to be non-toxic:
> [@](#):
>
> Today, shellac covers time-release pills for oral medication, makes yellow and orange food coloring, and seals letters with wax. Since it’s non-toxic and edible, other synthetic substances haven’t replaced shellac.
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### Author:  [@According\_to\_Pliny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/According_to_Pliny)
#### Post date: [November 30, 2006, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burning-furniture-or-books-for-heat/382363/7 "2006-11-30T22:25:25Z")
When growing up everybody in the city had an oil barrel in the backyard and burned absolutely everything. Plastic was the worst, and would stink up the neighbor’s clothesline.
We all lived, but perhaps are suffering in unnoticed ways.
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### Author:  [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)
#### Post date: [November 30, 2006, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burning-furniture-or-books-for-heat/382363/8 "2006-11-30T23:26:08Z")
The furnature would burn very nicely,a lot of those resins are petro based and would burn better (more energy) then wood. Paper OTHO is difficult to burn in mass form (books)
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### Author:  [@victor512](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/victor512)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2006, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burning-furniture-or-books-for-heat/382363/9 "2006-12-01T00:28:18Z")
If furniture is as laced with dangerous chemicals as said here, how do firefighters deal with it? Every blaze is now a hazmat situation?
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### Author:  [@Antinor01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antinor01)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2006, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burning-furniture-or-books-for-heat/382363/10 "2006-12-01T00:35:16Z")
Burn all the furniture you have to, but how could you even think of burning books? Bunch of heathens. 😉
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### Author:  [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2006, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burning-furniture-or-books-for-heat/382363/11 "2006-12-01T04:49:28Z")
[QUOTE=victor512]
If furniture is as laced with dangerous chemicals as said here, how do firefighters deal with it? Every blaze is now a hazmat situation?
[/QUOTE]
They have respirators.
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### Author:  [@Rikster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rikster)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2006, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burning-furniture-or-books-for-heat/382363/12 "2006-12-01T05:32:24Z")
I agree with shoshana, under the circumstances you are not thinking about living until 90 worring about what causes cancer ; your thinking about living through the night. Otherwise tomorrow has no point.
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### Author:  [@John\_Carter\_of\_Mars](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Carter_of_Mars)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2006, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burning-furniture-or-books-for-heat/382363/13 "2006-12-01T05:54:12Z")
My primary source of heat is wood. If a fireplace or wood heater is operating properly the smoke goes up the chimney. There is no “smoky smell” in our house.
I don’t think burning chemically treated wood, paper and so forth would cause a health hazard unless the outlet for the smoke became stopped up.
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### Author:  [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2006, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burning-furniture-or-books-for-heat/382363/14 "2006-12-01T14:20:16Z")
[QUOTE=victor512]
Every blaze is now a hazmat situation?
[/QUOTE]
Pretty much yes. When these things burn the best way to do so usually is to burn with extra air and a hot fire, these break down the nasty stuff into water and CO2 (yes there are still some nasty stuff, but minimizes it). In a structure fire, until the fire obtains ventilation (either by burning through to the outside, or by firefighters cutting holes for that) the fire burns without enough oxygen and produces a lot of partial products of combustion (even from wood only), which are very hazardous - this also creates the backdraft situations, when these hot partials are in a O2 starved atmosphere are suddenly given fresh air, they autoignite.