Everyone agrees that coal and oil causes serious environmental and human health problems. The Deathprint for Energy was recently updated showing which energy sources kill the most people, and coal tops the list.
We even found that pollution itself kills more people worldwide each year than anything else – more than war, smoking, hunger, natural disasters, murder, AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria – almost more than all of them combined.
So it’s not surprising that air pollution from nearby coal and oil plants would have some effect on many other health issues. Exposure to ambient air pollution has been associated with greater risk of elevated blood pressure in adults and children, especially exposure to pregnant women during the third trimester.
A new study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology by Dr. Joan Casey in the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley and fellow researchers, indicates that coal and oil power plant retirements in California were associated with reductions in premature births.
Premature Birth, formally known as Preterm Birth, is the birth of a baby at fewer than 37 weeks of gestation.
Casey and co-workers used California Department of Public Health birth records and Energy Information Administration data from 2001 to 2011 to evaluate the relationship between eight coal and oil power plant retirements and nearby premature births (see figure).
Using 57,005 births of which 3,705 (or 6.5%) were premature, the probability of premature births before and after plant retirement were compared among mothers residing within 5 km (3.1 miles) and between 5 and 10 km (6.3 miles) of the eight power plants. The control group was mothers living 10 to 20 km (12.6 miles) away from the plants since exposure would be minimal while other factors would be similar.
They found that the rate of premature births dropped by 30% in the group of women closest to the plants after the plants were shuttered. The most significant declines came among African American and Asian women.
‘The ah-ha moment was probably just seeing what a large, estimated effect size we got,’ lead author Dr. Casey told Inside Climate News. ‘We were pretty shocked by it — to the point that we did many, many additional analyses to try to make it go away, and didn't succeed.’
Burning coal and oil in power plants emits many air pollutants, the most important being fine particulate matter (PM2.5), nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxides, benzene, lead and mercury.
The authors controlled for as many socioeconomic, behavioral, health, race and ethnicity factors as possible that could affect premature births. ‘That could account for things like Obamacare or the Great Recession or the housing crisis,’ Casey said.
The study indicates that policies to replace oil and coal with other fuel types for electricity generation have multiple potential health benefits. Moreover, the negative health effects were stronger among non-Hispanic Black women so cleaner energy policies should potentially reduce racial disparities in premature births as well as improve overall birth outcomes.
Even small reductions in premature births can have large population health impacts, both in preventing deaths in the short-term and in preventing lifelong disabilities.
Because non-fossil fuel sources have very low deathprints and other health effects, this is very important to our plans for a future optimal energy mix, perhaps as important as our goals to mitigate climate effects. Unfortunately, contrary to popular opinion, the world is not decreasing the use of coal and oil. Instead, they are still the fastest-growing energy sources. That’s because coal is the easiest energy source to install in a poor country with limited infrastructure. And oil is still the fuel of overwhelming choice for all vehicles.
These results stand in stark contrast to nuclear energy where studies have shown there are no health effects from living near nuclear plants, even in children. Living near renewable energy systems is not hazardous as well.
While energy is essential for a high quality of life, and its absence is worse than any other factor in longevity, we do need to balance the source of energy with its disadvantages. While coal has lifted over 2 billion people out of abject poverty, each year it does prematurely kill about 2 million people. In addition to the human tragedy, the annual costs exceed a trillion dollars.
In fact, if coal is a significant part of a country’s energy mix, then health care costs increase about 10%. For America, that is about $400 billion a year.
Things would be much worse in America, as it is in China, if we didn’t have strong air regulations such as the Clean Air Act. The Clean Air Act is one of the single pieces of legislation that has saved the most lives in history. So it is not a good idea to reverse or weaken it.
But Scott Pruitt, the new Chief of the Environmental Protection Agency wants to do just that. Pruitt argues that the EPA overestimates pollution from coal-fired power plants, and that imposing strict regulations would cause power shortages and widespread blackouts. There is no evidence of this. We have imposed strict regulations for years and that did not cause any of these issues.
Besides, everyone in the industry knows coal is declining because of economics, particularly the abundance of cheap natural gas, and not regulations like the Clean Air Act.
Since we have a range of energy sources, we can choose a mix that minimizes the adverse effects of producing energy, while avoiding hurting as many people as possible, without messing with things that are working well - like regulations.
It can also save a lot of money.
