Coal kills

Coal is toxic under any circumstances. That’s just the reality. Coal lumps, coal ash, coal mining residues, and coal dust, that’s the point of this diary. It’s pretty much all bad. That’s why we have funds for treating black lung and coal mining areas are full of black lung patients.

Oh, and we’re dragging this stuff all over the country, trailing invisible clouds of coal dust, making people sick. That’s news, but should it really be a surprise?

The point I’m trying to make here is that limiting global warming is only one of the valid and valuable reasons to decarbonize the economy. There’s also the fact that burning fossil fuels kills countless people around the world, and countless animals as well. There’s the subsidization, because we’re subsidizing fossil fuels at a rate of $10 million every MINUTE worldwide. Oh, plus the military spending, while we try to keep the oil fields free of shipping interference and peaceful enough for the various authoritarians to keep sucking crude oil out of the ground and spitting it into ships. About Mohammed bin Salman and Vladimir Putin, for starters: how great would it be if they had much less money to spend and cause all kinds of problems around the world?

But I digress… back to a story about the health effects of living near rail lines that are used extensively for coal transportation.

Although U.S. coal consumption has fallen dramatically since 2005, the country still consumes millions of tons of it each year and exports even more, much of it shipped by rail. Now, new research shows that these trains can affect the health of people living near where they pass.

The study found that residents living near railroad tracks may be at higher risk of premature death from air pollutants released when uncovered coal trains pass by. The analysis of the San Francisco Bay Area cities of Oakland, Richmond and Berkeley found that increases in air pollutants such as fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) were also associated with increases in asthma-related episodes and hospitalizations.

“This has never been studied before in the world. There have been a few studies that have tried to measure just air pollution, mostly in rural areas, but this was the first to measure both air pollution and trains in an urban environment,” said Bart Ostro, an author of the study and an epidemiologist at the University of California, Davis.

Ongoing coal pollution
Trains carry nearly 70 percent of coal deliveries in the United States, leaving a trail of pollution in their wake. And coal exports will have a similar impact during transit. Ostro explained that when uncovered coal trains travel, coal particles spread around the rail tracks. Levels of PM 2.5 “(spread) nearly a mile away,” he added.

As a result, the mere passage of coal trains could affect the health of surrounding communities. Ostro was particularly concerned about how these pollutants could harm vulnerable populations living near the coal export terminal in Richmond. Previous census data had already shown that people in Richmond living near the rail line have a death rate 10 to 50 percent higher than the county average. Communities in Oakland could also be at risk, as talks are underway to build a new coal export terminal in the region.