NHS: Doctors Hail The Death of King Coal

Doctors may not seem the most obvious green campaigners but they face the grim burden of treating the health problems caused by environmental hazards. As such the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, a group formed by the UK’s major health institutions, has welcomed the Government’s commitment to end unabated coal-burning in just eight years’ time, a step that will go a long way to reducing air pollution.

Unabated coal-burning means using the fuel without any attempt to reduce its environmental impact, and Theresa May confirmed it would be ended at a joint press conference with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau on September 18.

UK Health Alliance on Climate Change

The alliance said that coal pollution obviously causes direct damage to people’s health.

“As a major driver of climate change – in the UK and around the world – coal also damages human health indirectly, increasing the frequency and severity of extremes of weather like floods and heatwaves; altering the pattern and distribution of infectious disease; and threatening the environmental determinants of health that underpin our patients’ well-being,” it said.

“Breathing in pollution emitted by coal-fired power plants increases the likelihood of developing ischaemic heart disease, stroke, lung cancer, and exacerbates existing lung disorders,” said Nick Watts, director of the UKHACC. “This health burden has been borne by people up and down the country and the NHS which carries the cost of treatment for these chronic conditions.”

Helen Stokes-Lampard, president of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said the UK could take a leading role in reducing air pollution worldwide. “Estimates suggest that coal-fired power is responsible for 1,600 premature deaths every year in the UK, and costs the UK as much as £3.1bn each year in human health impacts,” she said. “GPs are usually the first port of call for patients with long-term health conditions and we are often left picking up the pieces from this pollution, treating the conditions that dirty air promotes. The government has taken a position of leadership on coal phase-out and we are encouraged to see signs of other countries following suit.”

Worldwide Coal Cost

According to data from the University of Oxford, burning coal is the deadliest form of generating power even when nuclear disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima are taken into account.

“In the case of brown coal, coal, oil and gas, they account for greater than 99% of deaths,” said a report by Our World in Data, an Oxford University project to show how global living conditions are changing.

“For Fukushima, the majority of deaths are expected to be related to induced stress from the evacuation process (standing at 1600 deaths) rather than from direct radiation exposure. As stand-alone events these impacts are large.

However, even as isolated, large-impact events, the death toll stands at several orders of magnitude lower than deaths attributed to air pollution from other traditional energy sources – the World Health Organization estimates that 3 million die every year from ambient air pollution, and 4.3 million from indoor air pollution. As so often is the case, single events that make headlines overshadow permanent risks that result in silent tragedies.”

by Stewart Vickers

 

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