Fossil Fuels Aren't Just Bad for the Climate, They're Bad for Your Health, Too
We've long known that pollution from the burning of gasoline is detrimental to human health as it contributes to an increase in respiratory and other illnesses. Fracking has been linked to asthma, as well.
Asthma sufferers who live near wells in which hydraulic fracturing is used to extract natural gas are up to four times more likely to have an asthma attack than those who live farther away, according to new research from the Johns Hopkins University.
The findings are the latest in a string of studies that have linked health problems to proximity to such wells, and come as Maryland prepares to lift a moratorium next year and issue permits for the controversial method of extraction known as "fracking."
Now there is a new study that links increased burning of coal for generating electrical power in the states of Tennessee and Alabama led to lowered birth weights in infants during the mid-1980s after a nuclear power plant was shut down, and coal was used to replace the loss of energy generation.
...Carnegie Mellon assistant professor of economics and public policy Edson Severnini says those closures may have caused reduced birth weight in children in the area at the time, due to pollution exposure from the increased reliance on coal-burning power plants. The sudden removal of nuclear power, which doesn’t emit any greenhouse gases, led to a ramp-up in the amount of power being provided by nearby coal plants, Severnini wrote. That led to increases in particle pollution in areas adjacent to coal power plants, measured by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in total suspended particulates (TSP). [...]
... Looking at data from 1983 to 1985, before the nuclear plant shut down, ... showed that the largest change in birth weight occurred after the shutdown.
“That said, it appears that babies born in the first quarter after the shutdown were not affected at all,” Severnini writes. “From the second quarter onwards, however, infants born in areas with highly increased power generation and TSP induced by the shutdown were born with lower birth weight relative to the control group. Furthermore, the effect increased with exposure to additional pollution until leveling off. It was 97g for infants born in the second quarter after the shutdown, 146g in the third quarter, and of similar magnitude thereafter.”
The paper’s results are in line with other studies done on air pollution and birth weight. Notably, researchers found that in Beijing, babies whose mothers had their eighth month during the 2008 Olympics and Paralympics were on average 23 grams heavier than babies born the year before or after. This coincided with a national push to reduce air pollution in preparation for the global games, with the government taking cars off roads, closing factories, and “even [banning] outdoor spray-painting,” according to Science News.
Climate denialists can argue deceitfully all they want that there is no proof of any impact on our climate resulting from humananity's fossil fuel emissions which put gigatons of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year. We know that our climate is radically changing at an ever increasing rate, creating dangerous consequences in the short term from extreme weather events, including to our food supply, and in the long term regarding the survival of human populations and all species on earth. However, that is far from the only danger to human life for which our dependence on fossil fuels, an outdated technology, is responsible. "Scientists estimate" more than that 200,000 people in India and China "die prematurely each year" thanks to the burning of coal. How many die from fossil fuel emissions world-wide is unknown, but the continued extraction and burning of fossil fuels it is clearly dangerous to human health.
Comments
In the 19th century there was London's "Killer Fog"
in which thousands died within a short period. In Pittsburgh, PA, in the early part of the 20th century, there were "black days" and even major league baseball games got canceled. I thought it was common knowledge that these fuel sources can be toxic.
That said, we should be thankful for this report because it reinforces that imperative that we have to "keep it in the ground."
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
Getting hard to find the
Getting hard to find the various studies done showing increases in heart and lung disease which were quite prevalent some years ago... bad gateways...
This doesn't copy well, but you get the idea...
https://www.healthandenvironment.org/uploads/docs/Hrickoslides071014.pdf
Have to go down a few exchanges to get to the point, but here's an excerpt:
https://www.faa.gov/airports/environmental/records_decision/bos/media/ro...
http://mtag.org.au/diesel-pollution/
Almost all I seem to hear about any more is carbon pollution and I fear that the issue of industrial/fossil fuel pollution destroying human/animal/environmental health and killing life on the planet in a multitude of ways is being buried under corporate-created 'climate debate' nonsense often focusing solely on whether it snows in winter and absurdly simplistic 'is carbon bad - let's just trade credits' - while we are to be globally inundated with even more industrial poisons in the lucrative pursuit of publicly paid 'geoengineering': the spraying of toxic industrial pollutants into the stratosphere, this also destroying the ozone layer so that the killing pollution must be maintained to help cut deadly radiation no longer blocked - this so that unlimited industrial/fossil fuel pollution may continue right up to the death of all poisoned life.
Let's keep the (already diminished!) level of sunlight upon which all life depends and use it for solar energy.
Don't stop the world, let its (pacific) revolutions throw off The Parasite Class instead.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
It is not enough to eliminate emissions
The NYT reports this AM that geoengineering is back on the table. The problem is that even if we dropped emissions to zero today, we would still have a lot in the pipeline.
GE has its own problems, some of which are political. How do you know when you are done? What if someone doesn't like the effects?
The only viable solution politically and ecologically is to start pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere and back down to 290ppm. That would require an energy generation surplus equal to what was used to fuel civilization for the last 220 years. This is not profitable, so the government/UN would have to pay for it. Plus, I don't think we can build such an infrastructure using green tech - it would require orders of magnitude more steel than is annually produced for windmills (for example). And changing to a neo-primitive lifestyle wouldn't do it either (that would only reduce future emissions, not the current CO2 load).
So the choices are to mitigate (and watch the Great Barrier Reef die) geoengineer (and start some nasty wars) or build out every form of power generation and carbon capture system we can think of as fast as possible (which includes nukes because they provide the highest power density for a given level of resource consumption.) But we are not a wise or just species, so I don't think any of these options are actually going to happen.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg