Menu

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has devised regulations for opening burning. Some restrictions have come about because open fires can release many kinds of toxic fumes, and the pollutants released also make it more difficult to attain or maintain health-based air quality standards. Sometimes open burning can harm neighboring buildings and often do not get hot enough to burn materials completely.

Following is a Q &A, excerpted from Ohio EPA’s publication, Before You Light It….

• Materials containing rubber, grease and asphalt or made from petroleum such as tires, cars and auto parts, plastics or plastic-coated wire

• Garbage – any wastes created in the process of preparing, cooking or handling food

• Dead animals

With a few exceptions, open burning is not permitted in a restricted area, which includes areas within the boundaries of any municipal corporation; areas within corporation limits and a 1,000-foot zone outside any municipal corporation having a population of 1,000 to 10,000; and within corporation limits and a one-mile zone outside any municipal corporation with a population of more than 10,000.

• Agricultural wastes: material generated by crop, horticultural or livestock production practices. This includes fence posts and scrap lumber but not buildings

• Landscape wastes: plant matter such as tree trimmings, branches, stumps, brush, weeds, leaves, grass, shrubbery, yard trimmings and crop residues

• Land-clearing wastes: plant matter that is removed when land is cleared for residential, commercial or industrial development. This material may be burned only under certain circumstances and only with written permission from Ohio EPA.

• Residential waste: wastes such as wood or paper products that are generated by one, two or three family residences. Garbage may not be openly burned.

No open burning can take place within 1,000 feet of an inhabited building located off the property where the fire is set. Nor can the fire obscure visibility for roadways, railroad tracks or airfields.

No wastes generated off the premises may be burned. For example, a tree-trimming contractor may not haul branches and limbs to another site to burn them.

A complete copy of Ohio’s open burning regulations may be obtained by contacting the Division of Air Pollution Control, Ohio EPA, P.O. Box 1049, Columbus, OH 43216-1049 or phone 614-644-2270.