In Upper Silesia, domestic heating is a heated topic. This is because it is the leading contributor to extreme air pollution levels. Coal of assorted qualities is combusted in over 70% of the country’s 5.5 million single-family households for heating, often in ‘primitive’ boilers or stoves that do not fulfil any environmental standards. Accordingly, 33 out of 50 of the most air-polluted towns in Europe are found in Poland; fourteen in Upper Silesia. Efforts to solve the crisis have focused on incentivizing rational household-level technical and behavioural changes. Yet, results have been slow and largely unsuccessful. This chapter argues that the role of historically and culturally sedimented gendered subjectivities have been overlooked in understanding this phenomenon. In Silesian intergenerational coalmining families, coal-based home heating is traditionally the responsibility of the male breadwinner. In turn, embodying its dirty work has long been a primary route for attaining domestic masculinity, securing its patriarchal authority and integrity and acceptably expressing its familial love and care. Drawing together Cara Daggett’s concept ‘petro-masculinity’ with Martin Hultman and Paul Pulé‘s notion of ‘industrial/breadwinning masculinities’, denial of smog discourse and attachment.