The head of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Michael Gannon, has said the health benefits of closing down brown-coal power plants need to be considered against the health impacts of unemployment and blackouts.

The Hazelwood power station will permanently close on Friday, affecting 500 staff and 300 contractors who will lose their jobs. Hazelwood, in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley, is Australia’s dirtiest power station and one of the most polluting power stations in the world.

The executive director of the Climate and Health Alliance, Fiona Armstrong, said the community would reap significant health benefits from the closure.

“People in the Latrobe Valley have suffered a burden of ill health from the pollution caused by the burning of coal over a long period, given it is linked to cardiovascular, respiratory and neurological diseases, as well as lung cancers,” she said.

“For children with asthma, the elderly, and people with respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses, this announcement is good news.”

But Gannon said that while it was accepted that brown coal is the dirtiest way to produce power, he was not convinced there were enough alternatives available to immediately replace the power generated by Hazelwood.

“I’m not convinced we have that right,” Gannon said. “We need a mature debate about the power supply because it powers our hospitals, our schools and other essential infrastructure.

“There is also the health affects of unemployment that need to be considered. The Australian Medical Association has clear positions about the risk of providing energy supply through fossil fuels and specifically the risk of brown coal, but somewhere in this we would call for common sense.

“We need stable base-load power as well, and we need grown-up conversations about gas and nuclear power while technology is developed to deliver renewable energy.”

In it’s submission to the 2013 Senate inquiry into air quality, the Australian Medical Association warned that increasing pollution from road transport and mining, combined with the growing effects of climate change, was exposing communities to an increasingly toxic mix of airborne chemicals and particles that were harming health.

The submission warned that “thousands of Australians are dying prematurely or being hospitalised for asthma attacks and heart complaints because of lax standards and enforcement that leave millions exposed to harmful levels of particulate matter, diesel fumes and other airborne pollutants”.



While Gannon said there was “no question” brown coal was the worst way to generate power, he said the industry needed more certainty.

“It’s our industries that pay the taxes that pay for services in our society, like healthcare and hospitals,” he said.

“I don’t have a puritanical view of renewable energy. We must have secure energy supply in our country. The desire of health groups is to see a greater proportion of power coming from renewables, but we can’t be risking blackouts that can also effect hospitals.”

Armstrong said she agreed with Gannon that energy security was a pressing issue for hospitals and other essential services. But she said climate change was causing extreme weather events such as cyclones and increased flooding which was impacting hospitals and patients.



“We’ve seen examples where hospitals had supply interrupted from extreme weather events,” she said. “Brown coal fuels climate change which causes these events to occur more frequently and more severely.”

According to Environment Victoria, Hazelwood uses 27bn litres of water and emits 7,800 tonnes of hydrochloric acid each year. Burning coal is responsible for approximately 95% of air pollution in the Latrobe Valley, according to the Victorian Environment Protection Authority, while the CSIRO have estimated the cost of poor indoor air quality in Australia may be as high as $12bn per year.

A Melbourne emergency physician, Dr Stephen Parnis, said from a health perspective moving away from coal could only be positive.

He was president of the AMA Victoria in 2014 when the devastating Morwell fires spread into the Hazelwood mine.

“We are still watching closely to see if there are any long-term impacts to people’s health from that fire,” he said.

“Exposure to inhaled pollutants is known to be a cause of chronic heart disease, and anything that improves air quality such as reducing the burning of fossil fuels can only be a good thing for the health of the population of the La Trobe Valley.”