Midwest smokestacks sicken, kill thousands. A bit of Iraq money would fix.

About one month's worth of the US' expenditures in Iraq (6 billion or so) would be enough to upgrade old US coal-burning plants to current sulfer-dioxide standards. The energy industry has fought for 30 years aginst having to upgrade.

You'd think the government would think enough of its' citizens to appropriate the money. Instead the Bush administration is leaving the problem to the "market" to solve.

I don't just blame Bush II. He's just the latest in a long line of Presidents who have failed the American people.

The crime is that the technology exists and the money is there to solve a problem that should've been taken care of long ago.

It's enough to make you just mad as hell.

This story has a NJ slant but focuses on the immense health and environmental consequences of pollution emitted from older Midwest coal burning plants while detailing the political calculations that have allowed it to continue.

It's a long article but is worth the read. On a day when the media is awash in nationalistic fervor, it leaves you wondering why there's so little attention paid to what amounts to trading the health of our citizens for the profits of the energy industry.

A sample...

"The smokestacks loom like misplaced skyscrapers ...From the smokestacks, a plume of soot and chemicals flows into the sky above Ohio and rises into the jet stream."

"The river of air carries the pollution eastward... sickening children and shortening lives all along the way."

"More than 30 years after the Clean Air Act targeted polluters, aging Midwest power plants continue to spew exhaust ..."

"The Bush administration last summer scrapped decades of environmental policies that told big polluters when, where, and how to clean up their emissions.... the White House said this month that it will rely on the free market to help clean up the air..."

"Pollution from coal-burning power plants causes an estimated 30,000 deaths a year in the United States...New Jersey's DEP blames as many as 1,200 deaths, 6,000 emergency room visits, and 68,000 asthma attacks a year on fine particulates."

"The EPA estimates that it would cost $6 billion to bring the nation's old coal-burning power plants up to modern standards for sulfur dioxide, and that the savings in health-care costs would top $100 billion"


Much more...

URL Here

in the above-mentioned article, it mentions a $6 billion cost to save 30,000 lives - or about $200,000 per life saved. is that a good deal?

well consider the costs involved in various medical screening procedures:

Item $/life saved
Cervical cancer screening $50,000
Breast cancer screening $160,000
Lung cancer screening $140,000
Fecal blood test $20,000
Protoscopic exams $60,000
Multiple screening $52,000
Hypertension control $150,000
Kidney dialysis $400,000
Mobile intensive care units in smaller towns $120,000

in this case, perhaps more bang for the buck could be obtained by diverting that $6 billion into medical screening instead (i.e., more than 30,000 lives would be saved). but of course there are other hazards in life, perhaps the $6 billion would be better spent making roads safer . . .

Improvements Lives saved $ per life saved/year
Improved traffic signs 79 31,000
Improved lighting 13 80,000
Upgrade guard rails 119 101,000
Breakaway sign supports 2 125,000
Obstacle removal 8 160,000
Median barrier 28 163,000
Impact attenuators 6 167,000
Median strip 11 181,000
Bridge-guard rail transition 3 260,000
Channels; turn lanes 75 290,000
Flashing lights at railroad 11 295,000
Permanent grooving 6 320,000

in this case, many improvements actually cost more, so it'd probably be as wash - probably about 30,000 lives would still be saved. now, let's go tackle something really dangerous - like nuclear power! just how many lives could we save there if $6 billion were spent decreasing the horrors of nuclear energy? well, according to this site:

http://www.cab.cnea.gov.ar/difusion/Cohen.html

something like 2.4!! (at the cost of some $2,500,000,000 per life saved). thank you greenpeace for having your priorities straight.

is a good way to get your ars booted around here. Every knows that nuclear power is evil, and the death and destruction is something the human mind is uncapable of comprehending.

there's a world of difference. the FACT is that any given person will, or will not die from a nuclear accident. judgements about the likelihood they will fall into one set or the other are *estimates* and often heavily weighted by opinion of the people making them.

also, there's good reason we're so highly risk-averse when it comes to nuclear power plant disasters. they have the potential to be really, really bad. not bad only in terms of fatalities, but in quality of life, economic terms, environmental damage. which brings me to another quibble with this:

number of expected fatalities is hardly the only consideration when it comes to calculating risks incurred by nuclear power generation. how about nonfatal, yet detrimental health effects? how about additive effects? that which does not kill you makes you weaker, more often than not. and what about economic and environmental considerations?

and now for the biggie. how do you directly compare a potential nuclear accident to something like cervical cancer screening? cervical cancer, no matter how bad it is, won't render any land uninhabitable. it won't damage the environment. the economic considerations, apart from your potential death, are minute. the environmental effects are nil. yet these costs are completely ignored here. the comparison, frankly, is bullshit.

. . . where you got your figures for the cost of the cervical and breast screening? They seem obviously inflated, from someone who's done them.

the website is not the original source, so they may indeed be suspect, I don't really know. but actually, upon re-reading the article, it points out that the figure for medical screening are actually quite old, and would be substantially (perhaps 2X) higher now.

and just so we're on the same page, another piece of missing information is how many people need to be screened to save one life. for example, the $50,000 screening cost may apply to 1,000 people, one of whom may be found to have cancer at an early, treatable, stage - and thus be counted as "a life saved."

if i'm way off base here, please let me know. in any event, i think the gist of the article remains correct - that americans (or people anywhere, no doubt) have abysmal risk-analysis skills.