President's Page July 2008   Coal-Fired Power Plants & Our Health

By William J. Walton, MD 2008 DCMS President

As a practicing primary care physician, I have been concerned for many years about the lack of progress in stopping respiratory diseases, especially asthma in children. As a concerned citizen, I have been following closely the public debate about global warming, urban air pollution, and the stances that political ideologues have taken supporting one side or another. I now am greatly indebted to Texas physicians who belong to a group called Texas Medicine for Clean Air for educating and clarifying the issues for me. This column largely is taken from material supplied to me by the Doctors Haley—brothers John, Robert, Steven, and Charles.

Last year, 19 highly polluting coal-fired power plants were on a fast track for approval by the State. Public pressures led to the cancellation of eight of these. However, 18 existing antiquated plants with only modestly effective pollution controls continue to spew pollutants into Texas air. And six new plants, including a monstrous one, are under construction or have been approved. Coal fuel is our worst pollutant. An estimated 40 percent of air pollution in Texas comes from coal. More than 50 percent of particulate pollution in the Metroplex comes from coal; the coal plants in the Metroplex burn the dirtiest of coal—lignite.

The science is clear. Pollutants, especially particulates, make us sick and kill us. One study estimated that pollution causes 33,000 asthma attacks and 1160 deaths in Texas. Particulates affect children in various ways: stunted growth and permanently reduced lung capacity being prominent. Coal plant smokestacks spew mercury. Again, the growing child is most susceptible, especially the young neurological system. Mercury-poisoned children and fetuses have low birth weight, smaller heads, mental retardation, cerebral palsy, deafness, blindness, seizures, delayed walking and speech, and decreased performance on tests of attention, fine motor function, language, visual-spatial abilities, and memory. A recent EPA analysis estimated that 15 percent of mothers had levels of mercury in the cord blood that exceeded standards. Perhaps 630,000 babies are born each year in the US with levels of mercury that are too high. If we build more coal plants and fail to mandate better pollution controls, this only will get worse.

In addition to particulates and heavy metal pollution, we have the problem of carbon dioxide pollution which scientists (as opposed to politicians) agree contributes to global warming. It is probable that our nation soon will institute a carbon tax, making coal a very expensive source of energy. There are solutions.

Conservation, simply using less energy, is a “no brainer.” Much of the coal-fired plant demand is for peak use hours. Users could conserve energy if power companies were required to provide businesses and consumers with hourly electricity pricing meters to allow shifting power usage to off-peak hours. Building standards that require better insulation and efficient heating and cooling would help.

Alternative energy sources would help. Wind and solar power are just getting off the ground and need broad public support and tax incentives.

Robert Haley, MD, and the Dallas County Medical Society introduced a resolution at TEXMED 2008 in May addressing this issue. It passed the House of Delegates and was adopted as policy by TMA. Among the steps Dr Haley proposed are:

• Requiring immediate installation or retrofitting of technology highly efficient in reducing all forms of air pollution, including ozone-causing pollutants, particulates, carbon dioxide, and mercury on all existing and future coal-fired power plants.

• Ending state subsidies for polluting coal-fired power plants and levying a tax on coal, equivalent to that on natural gas, sufficient to pay future federal levies on pollution damage.

• Placing a moratorium on approval of old-technology coal-fired power plants.
Down the road, we need to develop other cleaner types of plants. Technology is being developed to burn coal with almost no pollution, even to the point of pumping the carbon dioxide into the earth. Gas plants are cleaner. If we can solve the political and international problems with radioactive materials, nuclear power promises to be the cleanest and safest large source of energy.

The political reality is that powerful people favor the status quo. They argue that we need the power for economic development; we cannot afford clean air. We must stand for our patients and children. We must argue that the savings to the power companies are being pushed off on the provision of health care and are leading to untold suffering. We must argue that the future requires us to think imaginatively.

We physicians are on the front line of combating disease. We get overwhelmed with treating individual patients, encounter after encounter. Sometimes we need to step back and don another hat, one that is mandated by our code of ethics and oaths. We must stand up and fight for public policies that protect the health of all our citizens. The air we breathe is not the property of those who are concerned with profit and economic development. It is the property of all living organisms and, most importantly, our children.

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