A Different Kind of Black Lung
Posted February 15, 2011 in Curbing Pollution, Environmental Justice
Maybe it’s news of the historic sit in against Mountain-top removal style coal mining going in Kentucky right now, but somehow Valentine’s Day got me thinking: Dear Utilities, where’s the love? Pollution from our nation’s coal power plants is making hundreds of thousands of people sick every year.
Coal, one of the dirtiest substances on the planet, is filling our lungs with black soot. This isn’t exactly the Black Lung associated with mining, but it’s close. A recent report tallies the annual public health burden of coal power in the U.S. as:
- 13,200 premature deaths,
- 9,700 hospital admissions,
- 12,300 ER visits for Asthma,
- 20,400 heart attacks,
- 8,000 cases of chronic bronchitis,
- 217,600 asthma attacks, and
- 1.6 million lost work days.
- Total health costs for these impacts exceed $100 billion per year.
Thankfully EPA is set to update clean air rules on coal and other fossil fuel power plants, but not if some Members of Congress have their way (Please write them).
The thing is, as my colleague notes, Latinos and other minorities are hit the hardest from coal power plant pollution. In fact, the Air of Injustice report estimates that Thirty-nine percent of the Latino population lives within 30 miles of a power plant – the distance within which the maximum effects of fine particle soot from the smokestack plume are expected to occur. For example, Chicago is home to two of the oldest, dirtiest coal-fired power plants, situated in the densely populated and largely Latino neighborhoods of Little Village and Pilsen; pollution from the coal plants have cost these two communities over $100 million in health and environmental damages per year. Making matters worse, the mercury emissions from coal plants contaminate fish, posing a major health hazard to subsistence fishers, who are also often minorities.
The good news is that plans for at least 150 new coal plants have been stopped in their tracks. In addition to avoiding the tremendous health toll of these plants, ending the reign of King Coal has avoided more than 500 million tons of global warming pollution as well. But we can’t rest on our laurels because our lungs are still clogged with all the black soot from the existing 500 plus dirty coal plants, until EPA acts to clean them up or we make the transition to cleaner energy that doesn’t pollute our air and water.
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Comments
Dr. James Singmaster — Feb 16 2011 01:56 AM
This posting seems to go against NRDC's position of supporting the "Clean Coal and CC&S" fraud. Besides the soot, burning of coal is probably the major source of mercury pollution.
While CC&S may get all emissions of mercury and GHGs trapped, to do it with high efficiency may require more energy than can be gotten from burning the coal. And then with huge quantities of CO2 being handled, an escape could roll across several square miles of land suffocating all life blanketed by the CO2.
Also any of the several chemicals used to trap the CO2 in the process will be used in many ton quantities and are very smelly and quite toxic, so that a terrorist attack on such a power plant may see a major disaster develop from just a stick of dynamite. Ms. Bailey's report adds to the negative side of what NRDC has been supporting in its call for the "Clean Coal' Fraud.
NRDC staff member, Rob Perks, had several years ago a report on problems of having a mess with trying to dump the collected stack scrubbings from one power plant having soot, metals and other chemicals. "Clean Coal" and CC&S are total frauds that unfortunately may not be recognized until a plant is up and running and has a mess with a CO2 escape or has the smell of the chemicals quickly getting concerned people to force courts to close such plants. Dr. J. Singmaster, Fremont, CA