She hopes the new study will prompt policymakers to quickly adopt clean energy alternatives The EPA monitors measure fine particulate matter from all sources, and it is difficult to disentangle how much pollution came from coal-fired power plants alone, Dominici said. Chan School of Public Health, said that previous studies – “including mine, by the way” – underestimated how damaging pollution from coal plants could be because they used a measure of fine particulate matter from EPA air quality monitors that was good but limited. Francesca Dominici, a professor of biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Robert Mendelsohn and Seung Min Kim, scientists at Yale and Columbia, are complimentary of the work. Photographer: Alex Kent/Bloomberg via Getty Images Alex Kent/Bloomberg/Getty ImagesĪir pollution may contribute to rising threat of antimicrobial resistance, study saysĪn editorial that was published alongside the study noted a limitation of the research: It didn’t measure PM2.5 directly and did not include the effect of another kind of pollution, nitrogen oxide, which combines with emissions of volatile organic compounds from other sources to form ozone, which can also cause health problems. The US Northeast, including New York City, will continue to breathe in choking smoke from fires across eastern Canada for the next few days, raising health alarms across impacted areas. Pedestrians at Washington Square Park as smoke from Canada wildfires blankets New York, US, on Wednesday, June 7, 2023. they modeled where the wind carried sulfur dioxides emitted by these plants, which can lead to the formation of other sulfur oxides that react with other compounds in the atmosphere that form particle pollution. The researchers studied emissions data from 480 coal-fired plants in the US and almost two decades worth of Medicare data. The coal particle pollution-related deaths represented nearly a quarter of all PM2.5-related deaths among Medicare enrollees before 2009.Īfter 2007, though, excess deaths declined “substantially,” the study says, to 1,600 in 2020. That’s about the same number of people who died in traffic crashes in 2021. The vast majority of excess deaths due to coal-related particle pollution in the study were between 19, when the US was averaging more than 43,000 excess deaths per year. The mortality impact was higher in the eastern part of the US, which sees more coal-related pollution and has higher population density.Īs regulations got stricter over the years, deaths from this kind of pollution decreased substantially by 2020, the researchers found. Exposure can cause cancer, stroke or heart attack it could also aggravate asthma, and it has been associated with a higher risk of depression and anxiety.īetween 19, 460,000 deaths among people who got health coverage through Medicare were attributable to coal-fired plants, the new study showed. The particles cause irritation and inflammation and may lead to respiratory problems and chronic kidney disease. Instead of being carried out when you exhale, it can get stuck in your lungs or go into your bloodstream. PM2.5, one of the smallest forms of particle pollution, is so tiny – 1/20th of a width of a human hair – that it can travel past your body’s usual defenses. Living with air pollution, especially from wildfires or agriculture, raises risk of dementia, US study finds People wear protective masks as the Roosevelt Island Tram crosses the East River while haze and smoke from the Canadian wildfires shroud the Manhattan skyline in the Queens Borough New York City, on June 7.
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