A new study found a 55 percent reduction in lung-irritating pollutants and 400 fewer hospital admissions after one coal plant closed and others added scrubbers.
By taking advantage of a “natural experiment” brought on by the closure of one coal-fired power plant and the addition of new pollution controls at others in the area, health researchers have documented how lowering air pollution improves the lives of asthma patients.
Led by Columbia University’s Joan A. Casey, an environmental health sciences professor, the team calculated a 55 percent reduction in the amount of lung-irritating pollutants in the air over Louisville beginning in the spring of 2015. The reduction came after the closure of Louisville Gas and Electric’s Cane Run facility and the installation of sulfur dioxide scrubbers at its Mill Creek plant and another, separately owned plant in Rockport, Indiana.
The researchers found that there were nearly 400 fewer hospital admissions or emergency room visits for asthma attacks in Louisville in the year following the closure and the addition of pollution controls.
Tapping into data from an earlier research project, the researchers also found a 17 percent drop in the use of inhalers by 207 asthma patients in the month after additional scrubbers were installed at Mill Creek in 2016.
The study also included data from a fourth coal-fired plant that added scrubbers in Madison, Indiana, in 2013, also separately owned. Rockport is about 75 miles from Louisville, and Madison is about 55 miles away.
The findings come at a time when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been attacking the science used to establish federal air pollution regulations that have helped cities like Louisville clean up their historically dirty and deadly air quality.
The research also has implications for the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, which amounts to another “natural experiment” where air quality has been suddenly improved—this time, because large sectors of the global economy have shut down.
Casey said that there have been numerous studies showing that people who live near coal-fired power plants have more asthma symptoms and other maladies. “But it’s been difficult to directly attribute those problems to coal-fired power plants,” she said.
When tougher air quality rules from the Obama administration went into effect prior to 2015, and cheaper natural gas began to displace dirty coal-burning nationwide, utilities invested in retrofits in the Louisville area and across the nation.
“Air quality changed rapidly over a short period of time,” Casey said. That allowed the researchers to make comparisons between groups of people suffering from asthma that were more or less exposed, before and after the changes, she said.
Source: Insideclimate News