I want to start burning an oil lamp so I can read at night, but I want to make sure that the oil I'm burning isn't sooty and won't harm my health in the long run. I've heard paraffins are bad for you, but I haven't found any alternatives.
>>1502672Reading in low light causes eye strain.
>>1502672There's a reason people stopped using oil lamps when electricity came along and it wasn't just that it's cheaper. All oil lamps produce soot and toxic combustion products including carbon monoxide and cumulative poisons. Paraffin oil is the least bad of them. If you've already read that it's bad you're out of luck because the other fuel used in kerosene and oil lamps is kerosene and that's worse.If you fall asleep and let your oil lamp burn out that's bad and you run the risk of fire. If you don't clean it regularly, that's bad and you run the risk of cracking the chimney and the risk of fire. If you leave it running for a long time and it gets too hot you run the risk of fire. If you try to move it while burning you run the risk of fire and of breaking it or the surface if you set it on a cool surface. If you use it in an earthquake zone, that runs the risk of fire. If you trim the wick too much or not enough you run the risk of fire. Other things can cause fire too but the lamp just elevates the risk unnecessarily.Some lamps can run vegetable oils and butter but some of those can clog the wicks if they even light, like Greeks and Romans used olive oil lamps but they used thicker wicks, and light and fish oil stinks.You might be safer with a tealight candle in a lantern or, I dunno, an electric light. You can get different colour of lamps, including warm white LED, or incandescent bulbs.
