\u201cWe have ended the war on beautiful clean coal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Donald S. Trump, State of the Union 2018<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
So, it is recorded for history, Donald Trump\u2019s misunderstandings of science, along with his cavalier plot of the trajectory of Hurricane Dorian with a black sharpie and recommendations that injecting bleach might cure COVID.<\/p>\n
Recent work reported in Science<\/em> indicates that fine particulate matter\u2014always a pernicious air pollutant\u2014from coal-fired power plants caused 2.1 times greater mortality than all other sources of PM2.5<\/sub> in the atmosphere between 1999 and 2020.\u00a0 In the United States, as many as 460,000 \u201cexcess\u201d deaths were attributed to fine particles from coal-fired power plants during that period (N.B. PM2.5<\/sub> are particles less than 2.5 microns in diameter).\u00a0 Fine particulate matter is associated with respiratory failure and promotes lung cancer.<\/p>\n Similarly, during the 1950s, when China subsidized the use of coal for heating in cities north of the Huai River, but not those to the south, subsequent levels of cardiorespiratory mortality strongly reflected this division.\u00a0 Levels of PM10<\/sub>\u00a0were 42 ug\/m3\u00a0<\/sup>(46%) higher north of the river, and human life-span was reduced by an average of 3.1 years, largely through increased occurrence of cardiovascular disease. \u00a0\u00a0For studies in Beijing, where PM2.5<\/sub>\u00a0exceeded 115 ug\/m3<\/sup>\u00a0for more than 6 days, the excess risk of mortality (mortality above expected levels) was about 40%.<\/p>\n The new work indicates that particles from coal-fired power plants are more deadly than those from other sources of fine particles, including forest fires and ammonium-based nitrogen fertilizers.\u00a0 Sulfur dioxide emissions were used to estimate fine particulate matter from coal, which often forms by atmospheric reactions involving SO2<\/sub>.<\/p>\n Mercifully, a few years ago, the EPA directed electric utilities\u2014much to their objection\u2014to remove fine particles from smokestack emissions. Regionally, in North Carolina, studies by Drs. Julia Krauchanka and H. Kim Lylerly of the Duke University Medical Center found lower rates of mortality after the passage of the Clean Smokestacks Act. \u00a0The science was right, and the air we breathe is much cleaner for it.\u00a0 There is nothing beautiful about coal.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n References<\/p>\n Ebenstein, A., M. Fan, M. Greenstone, G. He and M. Zhou. 2017. New evidence on the impact of sustained exposure to air pollution on life expectancy from China\u2019s Huai River Policy.\u00a0 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114: doi: 10.1073\/pnas.1616784114<\/p>\n Hill, W., et al. 2023.\u00a0 Lung adenocarcinoma promotion by air pollutants.\u00a0 Nature 616: 159-165.<\/p>\n Kravchenko, J., I. Akushevich, A.P. Abernethy, S. Holman, W.G. Ross, and H.K. Lyerly. 2014. Long-term dynamics of death rates of emphysema, asthma, and pneumonia and improving air quality. International Journal of COPD 9: 613-627<\/p>\n Lelieveld, J., J.S. Evans, M. Fnais, D. Giannadaki and A. Pozzer.\u00a0 2015.\u00a0 The contribution of outdoor air pollution sources to premature mortality on a global scale.\u00a0 Nature 525: 367-371.<\/p>\n Pope, C., M. Ezzati, and D.W. Dockery. 2009.\u00a0 Fine-particulate air pollution and life expectancy in the United States.\u00a0 New England Journal of Medicine 360: 376-386.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The new work indicates that particles from coal-fired power plants are more deadly than those from other sources of fine particles<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":517,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[95,85,5,716],"tags":[817,818,215],"coauthors":[6],"class_list":["post-2522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-pollution","category-environmental-health","category-faculty","category-fossil-fuels","tag-air-pollution-and-health","tag-fine-particulate-matter","tag-pm-2-5"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5KxUl-EG","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/citizenscientist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/citizenscientist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/citizenscientist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/citizenscientist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/517"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/citizenscientist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2522"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/citizenscientist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2523,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/citizenscientist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522\/revisions\/2523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/citizenscientist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/citizenscientist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/citizenscientist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2522"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nicholas.duke.edu\/citizenscientist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}