Coal is harmful, period

Coal means mercury exposure. Most people are not aware that the primary man-made source of mercury, a potent neurotoxin that accumulates in fish, animals and humans, is through the extraction, transportation and burning of coal.

When coal is burned in a power plant, it enters the atmosphere and can circulate there for up to a year, exposing the entire Earth to its toxicity. When coal is transported by train, one pound of fine coal dust per mile is dusted along the tracks. Think of decades of coal dust distribution, along thousands of miles of rail roads, passing through hundreds of cities, like ours.

Mercury has no natural function in living things. In humans, it damages brain, nerve function, kidneys, lungs, muscle and skin. The expression “there’s no such thing as clean coal, and there never will be” comes from the impossibility of removing coal’s toxic heavy metals of mercury, lead, antimony, arsenic, beryllium, cadmium and chromium.

The transportation and burning of coal is harmful to humans and the environment directly, and, of course, the resulting increase in carbon dioxide indirectly harms all life on Earth, through heating our climate. Coal should be left in the ground.

Gunnar Holmquist. M.D.

Spokane