Category: Health

Every Breath You Take – Is Probably Killing You

The World Health Organisation recently released figures showing that worldwide there are 7 million deaths each year due to indoor and outdoor pollution (almost split 50/50).  The same report states that ‘9 out of 10 people breathe air containing high levels of pollutants’ with women, children and those working outdoors being the worst affected.

The main cause of outdoor air pollution in urban areas is the burning of fossil fuels, whereas in rural areas it is the use of fertilisers and other agrochemicals.   The increase in air pollution also puts a burden on the health services; with air pollution linked to stroke, cancer, heart disease, breathing difficulties and possible brain diseases such as Alzheimers.

The main urban air pollutants of concern are NOx and PM2.5 (PM standing for particulate matter).  Not too many years ago, diesel cars used to throw out black soot from the exhaust.  Now, the particles are too small to see, which means they can get past the body’s barriers and make it further down into the lungs.  The fact that the particles are often covered in chemicals and might have metals adsorbed onto them can also promote an immune response, and lead to heart attacks and strokes.  The small size of the particles also allows them to cross the barrier into the brain, suggesting a possible link with degenerative brain diseases such as Alzheimers.

 

Within most towns and cities there will be some level of pollution monitoring, whether it is published or not is a different matter.  Although, in the UK the main focus is London, as the headlines show, nearly all of us are breathing health threatening levels of major pollutants.   In Northampton, the Green Party recently measured the air pollution across the town and found levels of NOx above legal limits right outside the General Hospital.  In 2016 the Royal College of Physicians released a report stating that there are 40,000 excess deaths each year in the UK due to air pollution.  In addition it causes 6 million sick days a year and has a social cost of £22.6 billion.

You would think that with the overwhelming evidence collected concerning the health impacts of air pollution the governments around the world would be making a big effort to cut pollution.  Not so, particularly not in the EU.  Whilst there have been some noticeable changes; e.g. congestion charges in London, in the main there has been little movement.  Indeed, in the UK, the government has spent £500,000 of tax payers money defending its inaction to provide plans to bring levels of pollution down to those specified by the EU – levels that should have been reached by 2010.  The government’s latest move has been to leave the issue up to local councils to resolve in their area.  Nor do I see the NHS as a whole making big changes.  There are some electric vehicles, lots of travel plans, some car share schemes and quite a few members of staff who cycle or walk to work.  But within most Trusts the majority of the conversation is about how to find more parking spaces for staff and visitors, not about how to reduce pollution or find innovative solutions to reduce car usage.

There is perhaps some hope on the horizon (although you will need a powerful telescope to see it) with surveys showing that younger people are less likely to want to buy a car, more people are working from home and the increase in the use of electric cars (up by 11% in the UK last year).  Statistics also show a slight reduction in the miles travelled, although the number of cars registered keeps on rising – I have a suspicion that a lot more shorter journeys are being undertaken.  But with powerful lobbying from fossil fuel companies and car manufacturers, weak promises from governments to ban the sale of fossil fuel cars some time after they are likely to have stopped being made, and very little commitment to invest in public transport (particularly buses, use of which outside London has declined by more than a third in the last 30 years) I am not convinced that much will change any time soon in the UK.  

Disclosure:  yes I do have a car, I do drive to work and I hate it (my request to work from home 1 day per week was refused).

Keep it in the ground

April saw the UK manage 76 consecutive coal-free hours of electricity – partly due to renewables and partly due to lower demand.   (Coal use increased when the Beast from the East hit and the cost of gas spiked.)  

This coincides nicely with a Royal Society of Chemistry book I am currently reading; ‘Coal in the 21st Century’.  My interest is mainly from an Energy Manager’s background; the burning of coal being responsible for 31% of all greenhouse gas emissions.  Living in the UK, where coal use has dropped by 80% in the last 5 years, and where coal is expected to be phased out by 2025, I don’t think too much about the direct health effects of coal anymore.  (I was born post-Clean Air Act before which the world was in black and white and you couldn’t see the hand in front of your face.)  But, whilst climate change is, according to the Lancet, the biggest threat to human health of the 21st Century, for a lot of the world’s population the health issues related to coal are much more immediate than those from climate change, which sometimes seem distant both geographically and temporally.  

Suffice it to say that I am halfway through the book and it has already opened my eyes to the reasons that burning coal for electricity generation is something we should be stopping with all haste.

The issues with coal start with the mining – even ignoring the environmental aspects.  Miners themselves, are often exposed to dust, causing Black Lung Disease, with underground mining obviously much worse than surface mining.  Then there are the accidents, which when they do happen, often kill many in one go.  

The mined coal doesn’t automatically resemble the shiny black anthracite that some of us remember from our childhood.  It is brought out along with a lot of impurities and waste which have to be cleaned off.  This may be stored on the surface near the mining complex, polluting ground and surface water with toxins and acidic runoff.  Those living adjacent to surface coal mines in the USA have an increased mortality due to the toxins emitted from the process.  Water is used to clean the coal, the waste from this process is stored in large ponds behind dams.  These are not checked for leakage and there have been cases of complete collapse, causing millions of gallons of toxic waste and water to pour into nearby towns.

Burning the coal causes air and water pollution.  The air pollution comes from some the expected pollutants, and some lesser known ones.  These include PM2.5 – particulate matter that can make it into lungs, bringing all sorts of nasties with it.  PM2.5 is linked to various cancers as well as stroke, respiratory and heart disease.  Also on the list are NOx and SOx, causes of acid rain and respiratory problems, Mercury about which I don’t think much else needs to be said (445 tonnes is released each year from burning coal for electricity) as well as Arsenic, Cadmium, Chromium, Lead, formaldehyde and many other metals.  Some of these are scrubbed from the air, so at least they aren’t dispersed as far.  However, they still end up in the waste ash that comes out of the coal station; its disposal is a major health issue.

The coal ash contains many metals and toxins, in even greater concentrations than in the coal itself.  Whilst the toxicological effects of many of them are known individually, there has been little to no research on the synergistic effects of these pollutants combined.  The ash is created in huge volumes; in the USA it is estimated that 140 million tonnes are generated each year, this is then stored in dry landfills and wet ponds.  The nature of many of the toxins in ash, such as mercury and other metals, means that they persist in the environment, never degrading, and they are likely to remain a problem for decades, if not centuries.   The dry landfills are not usually required to be covered, thus exposing nearby communities to airborne pollutants either directly, or as they settle onto land.  The wet ponds also have containment issues, with liners not always employed, allowing the water to leach into ground water thus contaminating drinking water, or entering the food chain through contaminated fish.  Then, as mentioned earlier, there is the potential for the walls containing the water to break, thus releasing the concentrated toxins into the local water courses and often onto land and into buildings.

There are many examples of coal mining and power generation polluting the local environment and causing health issues cited in the book that I am reading.  All of the examples are in the USA where, until recently at least, one would hope there is some degree of regulation.  (I haven’t read the chapter on regulation yet.)  But the majority of new coal-fired power stations planned or in construction are in India and China, where there are already examples of much weaker regulation for environmental protection (see my earlier post about antibiotic manufacture) and where the local communities are more likely to draw water directly from local wells and to fish from local rivers. 

Whilst there are pressing climate change arguments for removing coal from the energy mix, surely the dirty nature of its production and use, and the health impact on all those living nearby make keeping it in the ground even more of an imperative.