It’s being called a huge environmental disaster but, unlike Katrina, the TVA coal ash pond dam collapse disaster was not caused by the environment. Rather, this disaster was caused by the continued use of a dirty, poisonous fuel used in an outdated and inefficient mode of energy production, coal. Earthen dams holding the toxic materials from burning coal fail all the time, it’s what they do in time. The reason you may not have heard about it could be the fact that the media tends to down play such disasters and the real disaster of coal is seldom mentioned.
Coal kills, it has a long history of doing so. It is estimated that over 64 million Americans breathe air that has so much particle pollution that it puts their health at risk. Coal is estimated to cause 25,000 thousand deaths in the US every year from diseases caused by breathing particles and soot from coal emissions. Besides the microscopic particles linked to asthma and heart disease there are other health affects as well, not to mention the forest killing acid rain. Coal-fired power plants are the largest single man-made source of mercury pollution in the U.S., the largest contributor of hazardous air pollutants overall. Startling new research shows that one out of every six women of childbearing age in the United States may have blood mercury concentrations high enough to damage a developing fetus putting 630,000 babies at risk.
Coal companies are ruthless too, as one can see by the way they mine the last remnants of the stuff. They’ve blown more than 500 mountain tops off filling in valleys with more “engineered” fills that compared to the geological forces that created the landscape in the first place are quite puny despite their massive scale. Coal companies pay no mind to the effects on surrounding communities either beyond PR campaigns such as the current one claiming ‘clean coal technology.’ Coal may even cause the demise of human life on Earth as it is the single largest contributor to global warming. While 8 homes were swept off of their foundations by the recent coal disaster no injuries were reported but one can bet the toxic mix of arsenic, thallium, uranium, thorium, mercury and cobalt, at more than 10 times the concentration of coal, will have a lasting affect on the health of those living downstream.
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