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Hospitalizations down once power plants retired coal or installed better emission controls:
After four Louisville, Kentucky, coal-fired power plants either retired coal as their energy source or installed stricter emissions controls, local residents' asthma symptoms and asthma-related hospitalizations and emergency department (ED) visits dropped dramatically, according to research published in Nature Energy this week by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Propeller Health, University of California Berkeley, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, University of Texas Austin, Colorado State University, Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness, Louisville Metro Office of Civic Innovation and Technology, the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute and Family Allergy & Asthma.
[...] Between 2013 and 2016, one coal-fired power plant in the Louisville area retired coal as an energy source, and three others installed stricter emission controls to comply with regulations from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Researchers took advantage of these circumstances to analyze the impact of the coal-fired power plant energy transitions on residents' respiratory health, using data from Propeller and local hospitals to assess how asthma-related symptoms, ED visits and hospitalizations changed over time.
[...] The researchers found that energy transitions in the spring of 2015 resulted in three fewer hospitalizations and ED visits per ZIP code per quarter in the following year, when comparing areas that had high coal-fired power plant emission exposure prior to the transition to those with lower levels. This translates into nearly 400 avoided hospitalizations and ED visits each year across Jefferson County.
At the individual level, the Mill Creek SO2 scrubber installed in June 2016 was associated with a 17% immediate reduction in rescue medication use, which was maintained thereafter. The study also found the odds of having high rescue use throughout a month (on average more than four puffs per day) was reduced by 32% following the June 2016 energy transition.
"This is the first study to use digital inhaler sensors to understand the health effects of reducing emissions from coal-fired power plants," said study author Meredith Barrett, Ph.D., head of population health research for Propeller Health. "We hope this evidence will encourage government officials to support stricter standards when regulating coal-fired power plants and encourage us towards cleaner power options, thereby protecting the health of the people who live near these facilities."
Journal Reference
Joan A. Casey, Jason G. Su, Lucas R. F. Henneman et al. "Improved asthma outcomes observed in the vicinity of coal power plant retirement, retrofit and conversion to natural gas", Nature Energy (DOI: doi:10.1038/s41560-020-0600-2)
(Score: 5, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 19 2020, @03:36AM (9 children)
I guess it's time to bring this story out again.
Penn Power had a plant on the Beaver River, just a couple miles downstream from New Castle, and about 4 miles upstream from West Pittsburgh, Pa. When I was a kid, a pair of ~50 foot high smokestacks poured solid black columns of smoke into the air, 24/7. In the village of West Pittsburgh, no one hung laundry out to dry, because it would be black before it dried. (Back then, few people had clothes dryers, but everyone in W. Pittsburgh did.)
I guess it was about '69 or '70 when the EPA mandated that Penn Power clean up their act. A pair of stacks went in, about 120 feet high, with scrubbers in them. At any given time, when you looked at the stacks, there was probably nothing visible coming out of them. From time to time, you could see some nice, clean-looking white steam puffing out.
The quality of life improved dramatically, not only in West Pittsburgh, but in other towns downwind from the plant.
Having witnessed how bad coal can be, and how clean coal can be, I've never got on board the environmentalists crazy train that coal is entirely evil. Yes, of course, it's healthier if the plant doesn't belch soot into the atmosphere. But, if there are any plants like that left, well, someone has been paying a heck of a lot of graft money to the right people!!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by MostCynical on Sunday April 19 2020, @03:52AM (2 children)
you take it out of the air using scrubbers, and it ends up in lakes or dams, which die... [smh.com.au]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 19 2020, @06:18AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Sunday April 19 2020, @08:40AM
problems [howstuffworks.com]
fines for contaminating stuff [al.com]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2020, @02:13PM (5 children)
At its cleanest, coal is still the dirtiest major energy source. Even natural gas, or burning garbage, are cleaner. Those scrubbers you mentioned don't remove mercury vapor, carbon dioxide, or most of the uranium. So even if it no longer causes asthma, it still causes neurological damage, climate change, and more radiation output than an equally sized nuclear power plant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2020, @03:17PM
Why are you so onboard with denying all those people in Queensland potential jobs so Australia can ship coal by the tonne to India for basement bargain prices?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2020, @05:31PM (2 children)
There is so much wrong with this statement.
mercury vapour is removed using halogen injection.
CO2 - natural gas plants don't filter this either.
uranium - the primary radioactive component of coal is thorium, and the primary purspose of the scrubbers is to capture these solid components.
We do need to get off of coal, but spreading misinformation is not helping.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday April 20 2020, @08:28AM
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ [scientificamerican.com]
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Monday April 20 2020, @12:48PM
True, however burning coal emits almost twice as much CO2 as natural gas [eia.gov] per unit of energy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2020, @08:31PM
You are welcome to breathe them in YOUR backyard.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2020, @10:49AM (2 children)
This article is deeply flawed as it only looks at the short term effects and also falls for the "correlation implies causation" trap. While hospitalizations were down in 2016, this could equally have been the result of Trump's strong showing in the 2016 campaign. And the longer-term effects of removing Clean Coal byproducts from the air, which the study sneakily avoids, was a surge in hospitalizations starting in February 2020
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2020, @12:18PM (1 child)
Hogwash. How does Trump's election produce a measurable effect in areas close to the closed plants, but not in other areas? Go do some real science instead of handwaving.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2020, @12:12AM
Au contraire! Trump's strong showing led to him taking away their health insurance (which, believe me, is going to be replaced with something much much better, and SOON, I promise), which means people don't go to the hospital as much when they get sick now.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by istartedi on Sunday April 19 2020, @04:25PM (1 child)
My sister's ex scored some coal from somewhere. It was a bag full of softball sized-lumps. He was feeding them into the fireplace to give it a little extra kick, one at a time. Well, I was there for Thanksgiving one year and thought, "why not two?". The smell from one wasn't bad, but two didn't catch fast enough and we got a little coal smoke back at us. Worst. Smell. Ever. I can't imagine what it must have been like back in the day when everybody had coal-fired furnaces and little smoke stacks were poking out of apartment buildings all over cities.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2020, @05:30PM
The problem is you don't know where he got that coal from... it was probably Mexican or Chinese. If he had some Clean Coal from USA, you would only have smelled a faint but pleasing whiff of wildflowers.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2020, @08:26PM
Also "a 17% immediate reduction in rescue medication use", could not it be that some people lost jobs and had to survive - or not - on less? See, if a chronic sufferer chokes to death, it does cause "immediate reduction in rescue medication use" and "fewer hospitalizations and ED visits", in exchange for one single visit from an undertaker. Statistics is a delicate art.