Lending money to Indian mining giant Adani to build a rail line for the Carmichael coal project is akin to supporting big tobacco to transport hundreds of tonnes of tobacco to market, an eminent former surgeon and the chair of Doctors for the Environment Australia, Prof Kingsley Faulkner, said.



Faulkner made the comment in a letter to the chair of the government’s Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (Naif), Sharon Warburton, in which he urged her and other board members to rule out an investment loan to build the rail line from the mine at the Galilee basin in Queensland to the Abbot Point port.

He wrote that the Carmichael mine posed a “grave danger to public health both in Australia and globally”, given coalmines leading to a resurgence among mine workers of a chronic, irreversible and previously eradicated lung condition known as black lung disease.

The pollution from coal also causes childhood asthma, heart and lung disease, and some cancers, he added.

“Going ahead with it will send a terrible message to the world – [that] we in Australia really don’t care about the planet, or its inhabitants,” Faulkner wrote.

“Additionally, it will create an infrastructure for the potential development of up to eight other coalmines in the region.”

The Naif was established by the federal government as part of the 2015 budget to provide up to $5bn in concessional loans supporting transport, energy, water and communications infrastructure projects in the north. The board of Naif are expected to make a decision this week on whether to grant the funding for the 389km rail line, which Adani has described as critical to the $21bn Carmichael coalmine project.



Guardian Australia has contacted Naif and Warburton for comment.

A number of high-profile doctors and researchers were signatories to Faulkner’s letter, including leading child and public health researcher Prof Fiona Stanley and the former chair of the Western Sydney Local Health District Board, Prof Stephen Leeder. Both are members of Doctors for the Environment Australia’s scientific advisory committee.

Faulkner said an estimated 3,000 people died in Australia due to air pollution annually.

“It’s irresponsible financially for the Australian government, through the Naif, to fund this venture at a time when many countries are moving well away from coal, and at a time when renewable are becoming more cost-efficient,” he said.

“The Naif should not be feeding into an industry that has been discredited. Coal was the power source of the 20th century, but it should not be the power source of the 21st, especially as renewables are becoming better and cheaper.

“It would be foolish to ever support coal given the health impacts and given the scientific debate about climate change is over ... We know how serious it is.”

The minister for resources and northern Australia, Matthew Canavan, thanked the doctors for their letter but said he hoped they understood the “power of access to electricity to cook food, to purify water and to warm households”.

“Coal-fired electricity has other health benefits too for people who no longer have to burn unsafe fuel sources because they don’t have the electricity we take for granted in Australia,” he said.

“Coal will continue to play a role in the global energy mix, even as we reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“The International Energy Agency acknowledges this, and in particular points to the ongoing role coal-fired power will have in South East Asia.”