Neurodegenerative conditions are now increasing faster than surveys can accurately keep pace. Coal's byproducts, including mercury, hinder the brain's neurological health since they interfere with unhindered capillary blood flow through the brain. Last October, Harvard University released its National Children's Survey Report noting that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) rates have jumped to 1 in 91 children, a dramatic increase in ASD from the previous 1 in 150 rate. Coal combustion produces 30 percent of the mercury spewed into our environment and there are approximately 600,000 children with toxic levels of mercury in their systems.Genetics, the lifeline of deniers of ASD's external and environmental causes, simply cannot account for this epidemic when the huge toxic offensive on children due to coal firing, industrial food and vaccines are added into the equation. Genetics is an evolutionary development. A sixty percent increase in the ASD rate over several years cannot be accounted for by genetics alone. However few are raising an alarm that the coal industry is responsible for 98 percent of all utility-related mercury pollution being churned out across the country.
For the majority of Americans, the images of black lung and coal-related pulmonary and cardiovascular illnesses fall under the illusion that these conditions are limited to coal miners, towns and communities near mines and combustion plants. The PSR report however investigates every stage of the mining-to-energy conversion process: blasting, mining, rail and road transportation, washing and the generation of slurry, coal-firing, and disposal of post-combustion toxic waste. Far from being a localized health risk, coal's toxic pollutants inflict enormous biomolecular damage upon the population's health at every level of coal processing. There are now 584 coal ash dumps and over 600 coal firing plants scattered across vast tracts of land, towns and cities. For example, the transportation of coal alone releases over 600 thousand tons of nitrogen oxide and 50 thousand tons of particulate matter into America's air annually. Together these two toxins contribute to asthmatic illness, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, stunted lung development in children, rising infant mortality, lung cancer, myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure, ischemic stroke and brain development delays. With a lame short-sighted healthcare bill before the Senate, and no fundamental efforts being made to wean the country off coal-based energy, the country is poised for a health catastrophe beyond imagination during the years ahead.
Besides the several dozen toxic particulate matter (PM)--extremely fine particles capable of penetrating gas exchange regions of the body to produce inflammation in other organs "numerous coal-processing pollutants fill our bodies with oxidizing chemicals, such as sulfide minerals, arsenic, barium, lead, aluminum, cadmium, carcinogenic dioxins and formaldehyde, nickel and mercury. A study cited from the New England Medical Journal in the PSR report found that in 51 metropolitan areas where coal-related PM concentrations were reduced due to the Clean Coal Act, life expectancy increased. Another study found hospital admissions for cerebrovascular disease and ischemic stroke are directly related to coal-related toxicity.
There is also growing evidence that coal processing emissions are contributing to the alarming rise in diabetes. Diabetes rates have nearly doubled over the past ten years, now affecting nine in one hundred citizens. Forty-five percent of new cases are children and for the first time we are witnessing a steady growth in adult Type 2 diabetes in kids. A leading culprit is one of coal's most dangerous pollutants, the inflammatory molecule nitrogen oxide that has been shown to trigger insulin resistance, a defining characteristic of Type 2 diabetes.
The PSR study predicts the future increase in the degradation of Americans' health if the government remains addicted to the coal age.Al Gore has compared the nonsensical theory of clean coal with "healthy cigarettes, " and Greenpeace has summarized it as nothing more than a "public relations fabrication concocted by the coal industry. During a New York broadcast on NPR and the Progressive Radio Network immediately following the PSR study release at the National Press Club, Evan Kanter, MD, President of PSR and a clinical professor of neuroscience at the University of Washington Medical School, categorically called clean coal a "dirty lie. It is a word play that best translates into further environmental deregulation and billions of dollars going to the coal industry.
But as the Obama Administration hangs inept in the coal industry's gallows, it is Congress that is most devilish. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an endangerment report confirming greenhouse gases assault on public health. In doing so, greenhouse gases can be regulated under the Clean Air Act, much to the displeasure of the coal and nuclear industries. Residents of Wyoming should be especially thrilled since the Wyoming State Geological Survey group is also a collaborator in the US-China clean coal experiment. Very likely that state will be home for hundreds of thousands of giga-tons of underground CO2 storage awaiting leaks to asphyxiate people and increase the acidity of the state's water resources. Yet Congress, having been purchased by the energy complex, now seeks to strip away the EPA's regulatory authority on this matter.
Dr. Evans explained the clean coal myth as referring "to the technique of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). The problem with carbon capture and sequestration is that it doesn't exist. It is ten to twenty years in the future. There is no demonstrated ability to do this now, and it would not help at all with any mitigation of global warming at this time. Moreover, clean coal technology will still require mountain blasting, mining, washing, transportation and the release of most of the coal industry's worse pollutants. Mercury, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, surface ozone and dozens of particulate matters will remain in the atmosphere and water sources.
"It is a real pie in the sky notion,' states Dr. Evans, "It is by no way shape or form anywhere clean and it is just a way for the coal industry to get billions of dollars from this developing legislation. So nobody should be fooled at there being any such thing as clean coal. Holly Spaulding's article, "Searching for CCS in The Nation lists the serious downside of an energy program dumping billions of dollars into an uncertain and speculative clean coal campaign. On the one hand it is "fabulously expensive. In one instance, the current plans to resurrect the defunct FutureGen project from the Bush years could cost $10,000 to power a single home. Clean coal also requires vast amounts of additional energy to make carbon capture technology succeed. For now clean coal is a ridiculously expensive political pipedream to sustain the livelihoods of coal executives.
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