Now that we have all agreed that the planet has, in fact, entered a new epoch, the Anthropocene, and that humans are the primary drivers of biophysical change on this planet, all that remains for us to do is to establish an easily identifiable chief protagonist that threatens our way of life on this planet so that we can begin to take reasonable and meaningful steps to address this single biggest threat to public health and life on earth as we know it.
Without doubt, climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century. The impacts from climate change will affect us for decades and put billions of lives at the increased risk associated with water and food security, migration and associated social upheaval, extreme climate changes, changing patterns of vectors and disease. However, the threat of climate change, when carefully considered, can be further attributed to a main protagonist.
Ordinarily, people say that “all roads lead to Rome”. Over time, the meaning has become obscure. However, the Romans designed their roads purposefully so that they all led to Rome, with Rome being the central hub. This was done to hinder provinces from organizing resistance against the Empire. So the saying basically means that, no matter what you do, no matter how you try to get around it, you’ll be doing things the Roman way, because Rome is the centre of the world. The well-planned and -guarded Roman road system was designed to make sure that the provinces couldn’t use it against the Romans….and so it is also how the South African energy utility (Eskom) and the associated coal industry has organized itself over time – to hinder resistance against the single biggest driver of climate change and threat to humanity... COAL. This has happened globally in many similar developing jurisdictions, such as India, China, Indonesia and The Philippines.
Burning coal is among the dirtiest ways of making energy. Coal pollutants affect all major body organ systems and, according to a recent Physicians for Social Responsibility Report, “contribute to four of the five leading causes of mortality in the USA, namely heart disease, cancer, stroke, and chronic lower respiratory diseases”. See “Coal’s Assault on Human Health” at http://www.psr.org/resources/coals-assault-on-human-health.html for more information on this. Each step of the coal life cycle – mining, transportation, washing, combustion and disposing of post combustion wastes – impacts human health. Coal combustion in particular contributes to diseases that include asthma, lung cancer, heart disease and stroke, compounding the major public health challenges of our time. It interferes with lung development, increases the risk of heart attacks, and compromises intellectual capacity through significant mercury emissions.
Coal and mercury contamination of fish
Globally, fisheries have been and remain an important source of food in many countries and communities. The proteins derived from fish account for up to 16.5% of the animal protein intake of the human population. Per capita consumption increased from about 9kg per year in the early 1960s to 16kg in 1997. By 2030, annual fish consumption is likely to rise to some 150-160 million tons, or between 19-20kg per person. About half of the 6 000 tones of mercury emitted annually into the atmosphere is from human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels, mining and base metal smelting. South African coal-fired power stations emit up to 40 000kg of mercury into the atmosphere when the coal is burnt in the absence of mercury pollution control devices. Globally, up to 300 000kg of mercury are emitted from coal-fired power stations. The large use of coal-fired power plants in generating electricity makes mercury emissions to the air from this source among the world’s largest. This mercury then circulates globally and can travel very long distances in the atmosphere, often affecting human populations (such as the Inuit in the Arctic Circle) where no industrial activity occurs. Mercury is a persistent, bio-accumulative, trans-boundary pollutant that contaminates air, soil, water and fish and can seriously harm human health and the environment. Eating contaminated fish is the major source of human exposure to methyl mercury.
As South Africans, we need to realize that, while we allow Eskom to build more coal-fi red power stations to generate more base-load energy for large export orientated multi-national companies such as BHP Billiton and ArcelorMittal, we are externalizing our environmental harm on global society and, as the 11th largest global emitter of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, making a huge contribution to climate change.
Furthermore, when we analyze the nexus between coal, climate change and environmental health impacts in the context of the global evidence base, the picture becomes even more worrying. Roughly a quarter of all human disease and death on the planet can be attributed to what the World Health Organization (WHO) broadly defines as environmental factors. These include unsafe drinking water, poor sanitation and hygiene, indoor and outdoor air pollution, workplace hazards, industrial accidents, automobile accidents, climate change, poor land use practices and natural resource management. For children, the rate of environmentally caused deaths is as high as 36%. Environmental health factors play a significantly larger role in developing countries; where poor water quality and the lack of sanitation, along with indoor and outdoor air pollution, make major contributions to mortality. Climate change exacerbates this situation. Climate change amplifies this existing set of health problems.
According to the WHO’S report “Protecting Health from Climate Change, Connecting Science, Policy and People”, coal and climate change will affect, in profoundly adverse ways, some of the most fundamental prerequisites for good health: clean air and water, sufficient food, adequate shelter and freedom from disease. James Hansen, one of the world’s foremost climate experts, names coal-fi red power stations “death factories”, citing “coal is the single greatest threat to civilisation and all life on our planet… Our global climate is nearing tipping points … coal is the single greatest threat … The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fi red power plants are factories of death… The long lifetime of coal-burning infrastructure combines with the inertia of the climate system to produce the threat to our future. Preventing the construction of this CO2 producing infrastructure is the most important thing we can do...” The time to act against public enemy number one, coal, is now!