Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 6.8
Selected health impacts from air pollution from power plants in the United States
Health effect
Cases per year
Mortality
23,600
Hospital admissions
21,850
Emergency room visits for asthma
26,000
Heart attacks
38,200
Chronic bronchitis
16,200
Asthma attacks
554,000
Lost workdays
3,186,000
Source:
Conrad G. Schneider, “The Dirty Secret Behind Dirty Air: Dirty Power”
(Washington, DC: Clear the Air, June 2004), based on Abt Associates Inc.,
et al., “Power Plant Emissions: Particulate Matter-Related Health Damages
and the Benefi ts of Alternative Emission Reduction Scenarios” (Boston: June
2004).
was anticipated that these older plants would soon be retired. However,
because of the increasing need for electric power, many of these plants
are still operating and have avoided installing modern pollution controls.
As a result, most existing power plants today are between thirty and
sixty years old and are up to ten times dirtier than new plants.
38
Nation-
wide, coal-fi red power plants released an amount of carbon dioxide
equal to the amount produced by 449 million cars (there are only 254
million cars in the U.S.) and accounted for 36 percent of carbon dioxide
emissions in the United States in 2007.
39
Three-quarters of the emissions
came from the plants built before 1980, about half of the nation's plants.
Some are as old as seventy years. In addition to carbon dioxide, coal-fi red
power plants release 59 percent of total U.S. sulfur pollution, 50 percent
of particle pollution, 40 percent of mercury emissions, and 18 percent
of total nitrogen oxides every year.
Many of the coal-fi red plants that have installed scrubbers in their
chimneys in compliance with air pollution laws to clean the plant's emis-
sions have simply transferred the noxious waste to the region's water
supply. At an Allegheny Energy plant in Pennsylvania, every day since
the scrubbing equipment was installed in June 2009, the company has
dumped tens of thousands of gallons of wastewater containing chemicals
from the scrubbing process into the Monongahela River, which provides
drinking water to 350,000 people. No federal regulations govern the
disposal of power plant discharges into waterways or landfi lls.
