Here is an interesting article on wood smoke with cited articles about the studies done. I don't care what the families against woods make say. I will read a well cited article though. You can ignore the EPA portion of the article and skip to the references and get some decent stuff. Some of it was studied in the 70s when people were trying to claim that cigarette smoke doesnt need to be banned in public places though so take them for what they are worth
http://www.epa.gov/burnwise/pdfs/woodsmoke_health_effects_jan07.pdf
I wonder what the difference in air pollution is between a big square foot home with central air and 70 degree set thermostat(in winter), versus a small square foot home with a swamp cooler and a wood burning stove. I would imagine building and heating and supplying energy to that starter mansion is way more environmentally wasteful than my small house that has been standing since 1929 and uses FAR less energy than the big house. All that coal burned to light that big house dumps into the air. It just does it somewhere else so we don't care about it
If we really want to fix the pollution issues we need to ban population growth, multiple cars, and big houses. That will never happen because people have a serious need to show how much money they have. Only poor people burn wood
All things considered, wood smoke is bad for your health, really bad. I don't think the number of homes burning wood as a primary form of heat is large enough to warrant the ban on burning.