What is Coal Pollution Doing to You?

Let’s quit burning coal so that we can’t power our electric cars and we can live like Mother Nature intended, in the dark.

Edge, nobody is suggesting doing away with electricity, but what is your objection to making the ways we generate that power safer and less damaging to human health?

Coal emissions are responsible for thousands of premature deaths every year and a host of other health problems that have both human and financial costs. Those facts are well-documented by scientists in both the public and private sectors. Do you really object to making the air and water cleaner and lowering the death rate?

As for the quiz, there are more than two questions and they all have to do with coal.

The question about fish may seem off-topic to you, but coal-fired power plants emit a lot of mercury, which gets into the food chain and becomes more concentrated the higher it goes. Coal pollution is worse in some parts of the country than in others, hence the question about where you live. And people with certain health conditions and lifestyle traits are more vulnerable to the effects of particle pollution and other emissions from coal.

Where is the proof that burning coal causes thousands of deaths every year? Some scientists guessing?

Most scientists are pretty careful not to guess. They collect and study data, draw conclusions the data support, and point out when anything more would be a leap of faith the science won’t allow.

The public health and financial cost of coal-fired power plants has been studied for years. Particle pollution damages health and can be deadly, and so can some of the other emissions from coal-fired plants. One of the most recent studies is “The Toll of Coal” from the Clean Air Task Force, published in late 2010.

If we dismiss science out of hand, as you seem to do with your “some scientists guessing” comment, then what’s left? Uninformed opinions with no research behind them? If the choice is between scientific method and the opinions of people who simply think they know more than anyone else, I choose science.

No, Edge is in fact right. The “studies” are not at all studies. They have no basis in data, but are politically motivated conjecture. The “scientists” don’t guess– they lie.

I’ve repeated this here before: Hg content of alewive skeletons collected on beaches in Chicago during the late ’60s were idientical to the Hg content of fossil fish collected from coal mining operations about 60 miles away. Nobody has EVER seen a case of illness caused by air-borne Hg from a coal fire plant.

Efforts to eliminate Pb from paint & fuel has turned our air virtually free of Pb– with ZERO health benefit to anybody.

Air pollution does not cause lung disease: but it can aggravate pre-exisiting lung conditions. But so can heat, humidity, pollen and natural dust.

TreeHuggers continue to describe current air pollution as if we still were breahting the air of Dicken’s London 160 years ago– just like they claim we’re still clear-cutting forests– something that hasn’t been done for a century.

The biggest problem with coal fire plants was acid rain ruining forests and lakes– and that was pretty well dealt with 30 yrs ago and no longer much of a problem. Scrubbers eliminate soot from exhaust gases at the plants. The “smoke” you see now is steam.

We did need to clean up the process and now we’ve reached the point of dimishing returns. We need no more efforts efforts by the govt to CONTROL everything with no other practical purpose or scientific basis.

If you look at that bogus govt report your article sites, you’ll see they only show data showing death rates , asthma attack rates & heart attack rates for geographic areas, and present it as if all these problem MUST be due to air pollution. In fact, they’re merely implying a positve correlation, which, of course, does not prove cause and effect. Noter that the worst areas afre also where they MINE the coal. Do you think maybe the health of those those miners is skewing the results in any way? Do yu thinkmaybe those areas havemore smokers than other areasof the country, perhaps? Are there any number of other unstated factors affecting their health besides the presence of coal plants?

Interstingly enough, I live in the Chi-Naperville-Joliet corridor, ranking third worst: we’ don;t have any coal fire plants near here- we’ve got the Braidwood nuclear plant near Joliet. ??? Good “study?”

It’s not a government report. It was produced by a non-profit, non-governmental organization.

Much of the underlying science factors out the things you’re assuming skew the results. And as for West Virginia being the place where much of the coal is mined, it is also the state most reliant nationwide on coal as the source of electrical power.

There are a number of coal-fired power plants in Illinois, including a few in the Chicago-Naperville-Joliet corridor. See: http://www.environmentillinois.org/clean-air/power-plants2/power-plant-map

Without government efforts to “control everything” those scrubbers you’re so pleased about never would have been installed. They were required by government regulations that were put in place to improve air quality.

We’ve definitely seen improvements, but we’re not really out of the woods yet with air pollution. And since we’re not going to stop burning coal anytime soon, it makes sense to make the process as clean as possible.

You can’t seriously think that air pollution has no adverse effects on human health.

If you really think clear-cutting ended a century ago, head on out to the Pacific Northwest and I’ll show you the stump farms surrounded by forests. Those clear cuts are not 100 years old.

I’ve practiced general medicine for almost 40 years and have NEVER seen a case of heart or lung disease caused by air pollution (nobody has) and only in certain specific places ( like LA with its famous episodes of smog) do atmospheric factors bring on acute exacerbations of asthma or COPD.

Hg poisoning is classified as a rare disease by the NIH. Considering that virtually every American who lived during the 20th century was carrying Hg around in his teeth, how many of those rare cases of poisoning was achieved by breathing contaminated air or eating fish? In fact, virtually every case of Hg poisoning has a known ingestion of a mercurial salt as its basis- not unknown fish ingestion, etc.

The scrubbers are certainly a convenience to housekeepers living near coal plants, but have little to do with maintaining health. As I said, that study is bogus- no control group- plenty of confounding factors-they don’t even state the source of their data.

This is a clear case where weighing risks, costs and benefits need to be done and a compromise reached to achieve the greatest good with the least damage. I maintain that little extra benefit will be achieved and great cost incurred if further resrictions are placed on this industry.

The Chicago and the Joliet coal fire plants are both used only for back up during peak demand periods.

Coal is a fossil fuel consisting of carbonized vegetable matter deposited in the Carboniferous period. It causes as to destroy our health, pollution and�global warming effect�. As what we have noticed nowadays, our mother earth cries out for help to stop destroying our environment. That’s why Pag asa ng Buhay Association established in order to fight the global warming effect which is happening nowadays. It aims to help in preventing floods and denuding forest. It also aims to have a clean and green community. The �Pag asa ng Buhay Association�</will conduct a �tree planting� event this coming July 16, 2011 at Bgy. San Andres, Tanay, Rizal which dubbed as �Plant Trees Fight Global Warming� in order to become part of fighting against the �global warming effect�t. Join and adopt a tree

Coal is dirty no matter how you look at it and with solar, wind and biofuel power as viable options, we’d might as well start adding these alternatives so we can eventually do away with having to burn coal for power. Guido: I admit that we have cleaned up plant emissions in the last few decades but it’s nothing more than harm reduction. You’re the same guy who tried to disprove global climate change by stating it violates Kirchoff’s Law (a massive intelligence fail) so I call into question your ability evaluate data…even if you do practice medicine. You should also look at NASA’s satellite photos of air pollution in the US to get a bigger picture of what’s going on. Perhaps you don’t care, but when you see how isolated our planet is in the vastness of space, and the thin film of an atmosphere we have to exist in, the fragility of this system becomes more evident than if you just step outside you’re house in Illinois.

Unfiltered burning of coal is a bad option, as is complete removal of coal power plants in places where coal is most advantageous. Contain the most annoying pollutants: H2S, SO2, NOx, Hg and coal-fueled power plants should be fine. And I don’t think that people with otherwise healthy hearts get heart attacks from coal pollution. There are too many factors (weight, lifestyle) that need to be taken into account before coal is blamed as the root of all problems. I am not affiliated with a coal mining or distribution company nor do I nor my community use coal. Natgas is cleaner but uneconomical in many areas.