A Coal-Processing Plant Closed. Local E.R. Visits Dropped Sharply.

Coal miners with black lung disease are gathering at the Department of Labor on Tuesday to protest what they see as the Trump administration’s failure to enforce workplace safety regulations designed to protect them. The protests come as the administration is actively trying to revive the coal industry.

The miners argue that the White House is failing to protect their health by declining to enforce limits on cancer-causing silica dust, even as it offers coal companies “a handout,” Gary Hairston, a retired coal miner, told my colleague Lisa Friedman.

But it’s not just coal miners that face health risks from the coal supply chain. Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel, and the largest contributor to climate change worldwide. For years, researchers have sought to quantify how coal plants affect their neighbors’ respiratory health and contribute to excess deaths in nearby communities.

A recent study illustrated the ways closing a coal coking plant almost immediately improved public health. New York University researchers tracked trends in hospital visits from surrounding neighborhoods after a coal-processing facility near Pittsburgh shut down. In a study published in July in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, they found that emergency department visits for respiratory issues dropped by about 20 percent in the month following the shutdown of the plant.

The lung-health benefits from reduced air pollution were “remarkably consistent” with what asthmatic smokers experience after they quit, researchers Wuyue Yu and George Thurston wrote.

At the facility, which shut down in 2016, coal was heated to produce material used to manufacture steel, a process that released pollutants into the air that Thurston likened to “coal burning, but on steroids.”

The shuttering of the plant provided a “natural experiment,” an opportunity for researchers to understand more about the effects of the facility on its neighbors’ health. They analyzed trends in emergency room visits for three years before and after the shutdown date.

The month after the closure, emergency room visits for children with asthma dropped by 41 percent. The researchers also found a 20 percent decrease in overall E.R. visits for respiratory problems. Cardiovascular emergency department visits dropped significantly, too.

“The drop-off was much more dramatic than we ever expected — huge percentages drop in a matter of days or weeks,” Thurston said.

Some of the numbers continued falling over time, Thurston said. He interpreted this as evidence that the longer-term improvement in air quality resulted in lung healing for some residents.

“It’s sort of like people moving out to Arizona to get away from the things that are causing their asthma, as an analogy,” he said.

Similar studies have shown that closing coal plants or installing scrubbers that reduce air pollution can improve asthma rates for children in surrounding neighborhoods, Yu said.

Since 1999, pollution control measures have reduced deaths attributed to coal-fired power plant pollution by about 95 percent, according to 2023 research that studied Medicare recipients. Despite the improvements, emissions from coal-fired power plants contributed to an estimated 1,600 excess deaths among that population in 2020, the research found.

In 2023, the Biden administration proposed rules that would limit power plant emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants, a move that was expected to further reduce threats to public health. The Trump administration moved to roll back those regulations in June.

The administration recently announced more than $600 million in support for the coal industry, which has been in decline as other sources of energy get cheaper. In July, the official Department of Energy account on X posted a photo of a gleaming lump of coal with a caption reading “she is the moment.”

Thurston is optimistic that research focusing on the health effects of coal-burning facilities will encourage policymakers to regulate emissions — if not to solve climate change, then to reduce pediatric asthma rates.

“The only way we have of actually solving the climate problem is to advocate for clean air and go after these sources that are causing the greatest adverse health effects,” he said. “It’s more efficient,” he added.

The Trump administration

In Georgia and across the country, electricity bills have skyrocketed in recent months. On average, residential customers of Georgia Power have seen their bills rise by $518 a year, or 33 percent, since 2023.

Yet Trump has rescinded $7 billion in federal grants for renewable energy like solar and wind power that could reduce the strain on working-class households. And the cuts are dealing a disproportionate blow to the Republican-led states that propelled him back to office.

Established by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the Solar for All program was designed to help more than 900,000 households get access to solar energy.

The idea was to reduce the use of fossil fuels, the leading driver of climate change, while also helping participating households to save an average of about $400 annually on electric bills. — Maxine Joselow

Read more.

Pollution

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California vetoed a bill that would phase out harmful “forever chemicals” used in nonstick cookware, saying he was worried it would make pots and pans more expensive for Californians.

The veto, announced late Monday, is a victory for the cookware industry as well as for celebrity chefs and cooks who had defended the chemicals’ use, saying that nonstick pans are safe when used responsibly. Rachael Ray, David Chang and Marcus Samuelsson had all opposed the bill. — Hiroko Tabuchi

Read more.

Number of the day

Nations are not spending enough to ensure that the forests that cover nearly a third of the planet remain healthy, according to a new United Nations report. To meet various international climate, biodiversity and land restoration goals, annual global spending needs to triple to $300 billion by 2030, the report found.