Health and environmental impact of the coal industry

[2][3][4] Worldwide 25 people die early for each terawatt hour of electricity generated by coal, around a thousand times more than nuclear or solar.

Paleontological, cultural, and other historic values may be endangered due to the disruptive activities of blasting, ripping, and excavating coal.

Dust degrades air quality in the immediate area, has an adverse impact on vegetative life, and constitutes health and safety hazards for mine workers and nearby residents.

The soil and rock removed is deposited in nearby valleys, hollows and depressions, resulting in blocked (and contaminated) waterways.

[10][11] Removal of soil and rock overburden covering the coal resource may cause burial and loss of topsoil, exposes parent material, and creates large infertile wastelands.

In a particularly spectacular case in the German Saar region (another historical coal-mining area), a suspected mine collapse in 2008 created an earthquake measuring 4.0 on the Richter magnitude scale, causing some damage to houses.

[19] Coal-fired boilers, using either coal or lignite rich in limestone, produces fly ash containing calcium oxide (CaO).

[20] Sodium carbonate (washing soda) further reacts with the remaining Ca and Mg in the water to remove / precipitate the total hardness.

[22] Pollutant discharges from ash ponds to surface waters typically include arsenic, lead, mercury, selenium, chromium, and cadmium.

EPA estimated that about 300 dry landfills and wet storage ponds are used around the country to store ash from coal-fired power plants.

The storage facilities hold the noncombustible ingredients of coal, including the ash captured by equipment designed to reduce air pollution.

High sediment levels can kill fish directly, bury spawning beds, reduce light transmission, alter temperature gradients, fill in pools, spread streamflows over wider, shallower areas, and reduce the production of aquatic organisms used as food by other species.

[9] The presence of acid-forming materials exposed as a result of surface mining can affect wildlife by eliminating habitat and by causing direct destruction of some species.

Acids, dilute concentrations of heavy metals, and high alkalinity can cause severe damage to wildlife in some areas.

The duration of acidic-waste pollution can be long; estimates of the time required to leach exposed acidic materials in the Eastern United States range from 800 to 3,000 years.

[9] In northern China, air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels, principally coal, is causing people to die on average 5.5 years sooner than they otherwise might.According to a report by the World Health Organization in 2008, coal particulates pollution are estimated to shorten approximately 10,000 lives annually worldwide.

[35] Coal and coal waste products (including fly ash, bottom ash and boiler slag) release approximately 20 toxic-release chemicals, including arsenic, lead, mercury, nickel, vanadium, beryllium, cadmium, barium, chromium, copper, molybdenum, zinc, selenium and radium, which are dangerous if released into the environment.

Coal seam fires may burn underground for decades, threatening destruction of forests, homes, roadways and other valuable infrastructure.

[42][43] In New York State winds deposit mercury from the coal-fired power plants of the Midwest, contaminating the waters of the Catskill Mountains.

Mercury is concentrated up the food chain, as it is converted into methylmercury, a toxic compound which harms both wildlife and people who consume freshwater fish.

[47] "People are exposed to methylmercury almost entirely by eating contaminated fish and wildlife that are at the top of aquatic food chains.

Every year, the burning of coal without the use of available pollution control technology causes thousands of preventable deaths in the United States.

These external costs include damage to the environment and to human health from airborne particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, chromium VI and arsenic emissions produced by coal.

[54] High rates of motherboard failures in China and India appear to be due to "sulfurous air pollution produced by coal that’s burned to generate electricity.

[59] According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, methane has a global warming potential 21 times greater than that of carbon dioxide over a 100-year timeline.

This is due to the relaxation of pressure and fracturing of the strata during mining activity, which gives rise to safety concerns for the coal miners if not managed properly.

[58] In 2008 James E. Hansen and Pushker Kharecha published a peer-reviewed scientific study analyzing the effect of a coal phase-out on atmospheric CO2 levels.

[36][61] Coal plants emit radiation in the form of radioactive fly ash, which is inhaled and ingested by neighbours, and incorporated into crops.

A 1978 paper from Oak Ridge National Laboratory estimated that coal-fired power plants of that time may contribute a whole-body committed dose of 19 μSv/year to their immediate neighbours in a 500 m radius.

Most of these risks can be greatly reduced in modern mines, and multiple fatality incidents are now rare in some parts of the developed world.