Learn More: Coal's Assault on Human Health

Coal pollutants affect all major body organ systems and contribute to four of the five leading causes of mortality in the U.S.: heart disease, cancer, stroke, and chronic lower respiratory diseases. This conclusion emerges from PSR’s reassessment of the widely recognized health threats from coal, our Coal’s Assault on Human Health report. Each step of the coal lifecycle—mining, transportation, washing, combustion, and disposing of post-combustion wastes—impacts human health. Coal combustion in particular contributes to diseases affecting large portions of the U.S. population, including asthma, lung cancer, heart disease, and stroke, compounding the major public health challenges of our time. It interferes with lung development, increases the risk of heart attacks, and compromises intellectual capacity through mercury pollution.

Coal combustion also releases significant amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Unless we address coal, the U.S. will be unable to achieve the reductions in carbon emissions necessary to stave off the worst health impacts of global warming.

But we don’t need to rely on this polluting, dangerous fossil fuel to meet our need for energy. We can improve our nation’s respiratory, cardiovascular, and neurological health. We can replace our dependence on coal with clean, safe alternatives, while at the same time preventing the deterioration of global public health caused by global warming. In light of our assessment of the health impact of coal, PSR affirms that the U.S. needs a medically defensible energy policy, which can be achieved through the following steps:

• Emissions of carbon dioxide should be cut as deeply and as swiftly as possible, with the objective of reducing carbon dioxide levels to 350 parts per million, through strong climate and energy legislation that establishes hard caps on global warming pollution coming from coal power plants, and through the Clean Air Act (CAA ). Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions from coal plants have been designated pollutants under the CAA. The EPA should be fully empowered to regulate carbon dioxide under the CAA so that coal’s contribution to global warming can be brought to an end.
• Further, there should be no new construction of coal fired power plants, so as to avoid increasing health-endangering emissions of carbon dioxide, as well as criteria pollutants and hazardous air pollutants.
• The U.S. should dramatically reduce fossil fuel power plant emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides so that all localities are in attainment for national ambient air quality standards.
• The EPA should establish a standard, based on Maximum Achievable Control Technology, for mercury and other hazardous air pollutant emissions from electrical generation.
• Finally, the nation must develop its capacity to generate electricity from clean, safe, renewable sources so that existing coal-fired power plants may be phased out without eliminating jobs or compromising the nation’s ability to meet its energy needs. In place of investment in coal (including subsidies for the extraction and combustion of coal and for capture of carbon and other pollutants), the U.S. should fund energy efficiency, conservation measures, and clean, safe, renewable energy sources such as wind energy, solar, and wave power.

These steps take into account the public health impacts of coal while meeting our need for energy.

When our nation establishes a health-driven energy policy, one that replaces our dependence on coal with clean, safe alternatives, we will prevent the deterioration of health caused by global warming while reaping the rewards in improvements to respiratory, cardiovascular, and neurological health.

Please urge your Senators to protect our health, and our children’s health, from coal pollution today.

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