European coal pollution causes 22,300 premature deaths a year, study shows

[wtmusic]

"Air pollution from Europe's 300 largest coal power stations causes 22,300 premature deaths a year and costs companies and governments billions of pounds in disease treatment and lost working days, says a major study of the health impacts of burning coal to generate electricity.

The research, from Stuttgart University's Institute for energy economics and commissioned by Greenpeace International, suggests that a further 2,700 people can be expected to die prematurely each year if a new generation of 50 planned coal plants are built in Europe. "The coal-fired power plants in Europe cause a considerable amount of health impacts," the researchers concluded.

Analysis of the emissions shows that air pollution from coal plants is now linked to more deaths than road traffic accidents in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. In Germany and the UK, coal-fired power stations are associated with nearly as many deaths as road accidents. Polish coal power plants were estimated to cause more than 5,000 premature deaths in 2010."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jun/12/european-coal-pollution-premature-deaths

[phantom power]

1. remarkably, no nation will react to this by immediately shutting all their coal generators

[Nihil]

2. It will be interesting to see ...

... if this Greenpeace-associated study gets anything like the visibility as some of their other ones ...

[phantom power]

3. If the public's fear was correlated with actual numbers of people killed...

and numbers of people who will be killed... there would be no fossil fuel burning. Certainly no coal burning.