There is nothing quite like taking a big, fresh breath of pollution. All of those lovely chemicals going to your lungs and blood stream, leading to all sorts of diseases. And where are most of these pollutants coming from? Your neighborhood coal fired power plant.
Last year I wrote about conventional fossil fuels versus alternative sources for electricity production for my junior research paper. I was already in favor of alternative energy going into my research paper, but when I finished, my hatred for coal was greatly magnified. Why? Let me show you.
When coal is burnt, three main pollutants—there are many more—are released: carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides. Most people are familiar with the first. Carbon dioxide is the leading ingredient in global warming. I will touch on this subject in a later post. I doubt that many know about sulfur dioxide. In brief, it irritates the lining of the airways and can cause serious breathing difficulty and possibly death. Nitrogen oxides work somewhat along the same lines as sulfur dioxide by causing respiratory problems. They also are the main ingredients in ground level ozone and they are a part of acid rain. Another pollutant that may be even more directly dangerous to humans is particulate matter. These are tiny particles that irritate and damage the lungs, and some are small enough that they will enter the bloodstream. One statistic on particulate matter is that in areas of high concentrations of small particles the mortality risk can increase by 17 percent.
Coal may be the cheapest form of energy right now, but of course this doesn’t include the cost of hospital bills, air pollution, or damage to the environment that mining coal causes (yet another topic of discussion).
