Coal comfort
Over t he past few years, we in Alberta have been barraged by claims of the supposed need to phase- out coalburning facilities to address harmful impacts, with the demands led by the Pembina Institute and the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. The provincial government is trying to convince us, too, stating on its website that “an accelerated Alberta coal phase out will prevent 600 premature deaths, 500 emergency room visits, and will avoid nearly $ 3 billion in negative health outcomes.” Three- billion dollars in health savings seems like a pretty tall tale to me. If you are skeptical of these claims, welcome to the club.
There are recent published studies that can be used to fact check some of these claims. These studies looked at sources of air pollution in Alberta cities that happen to have coal-burning facilities nearby. One study looked at sources of supposedly harmful submicron particle ( PM1) pollution in Edmonton. Coal- burning emissions did not stand out as an important source of this pollution. Rather, the leading sources were related to several industrial activities that emit sulfur in the province ( largely related to oil and gas).
Another study looked at fine particle ( PM2.5) pollution in Edmonton. The important sources here were traffic and the same sort of sulfur- emitting industrial activities that showed up in the first study. Coal burning again did not stand out. In fact, further analysis showed that coal burning was only linked with low PM2.5 levels in Edmonton.
Yet a third study tried a different approach, based on t he i dea t hat maybe something was missed in the other studies. This time pollutants called “air toxics” were looked at instead of PM2.5 in Edmonton. Traffic was identified as the major source of these pollutants. Coal burning once more did not stand out.
That’s three separate studies, all with similar findings that coal burning emissions do not make a sizeable contribution to air pollution in Edmonton. A final study looked at sources of PM2.5 pollution in the city of Red Deer. This study showed that a coal- burning facility located east of Red Deer was only linked with low to average air quality during winter when PM2.5 pollution is at its worst.
Based on these studies, evidence is weak that burning coal in Alberta has harmful impacts. One would expect, at the very least, that two or three of these studies would consistently show that coal burning makes a distinct and sizeable contribution to air pollution in Edmonton or Red Deer. In science this is called replication, a key feature for establishing evidence. But none of them do. Results that are consistent across these studies showed that there are many sources of air pollution in these cities, and coal burning only leads to minor amounts of pollution. How can there be any real health impacts if people in these cities are being ex- posed to air pollution mostly coming from other sources (e.g., traffic) and only minor amounts from burning coal? These studies do not support claims about harmful impacts.
Practically all of the supposed harmful i mpacts linked to air pollution are from PM2.5 and ozone. Even the notion that these pollutants have harmful impacts on people is misleading and l oaded with uncertainty. PM2.5 and ozone epidemiology studies mostly only show marginally significant effects and they are not free of bias and confounding. Marginally significant does not mean it is real.
Recent studies of air pollution and heart attacks in Alberta would suggest otherwise: One study showed that more PM2.5 pollution leads to fewer heart attacks and more ozone pollution had absolutely no effect on heart attacks. Another showed t hat absolutely no consistency was found between air pollution and heart attacks in Calgary compared to Edmonton, even though these cities are only 300-kilometres apart.
What does this all mean? Perhaps breathing the air in Edmonton or Red Deer is less harmful to your health than ingesting unproven claims that coal burning is poisoning Albertans. The better health benefit would be to tune them out.
SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE IS WEAK THAT BURNING COAL IN ALBERTA HAS HARMFUL IMPACTS.