The days of pea-soupers may be long gone but Britons still suffer the effects of coal-burning power plants.

In the UK, 1600 deaths per year and over 350,000 lost workdays can be attributed to air pollution from coal-burning, according to figures published this week by the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL), a non-profit group in Brussels. It also found that breathing fumes from coal-fired power stations is to blame for more than a million cases of respiratory symptoms, for example, wheezing and shortness of breath, a year.

The report coincides with a UK parliamentary debate on the future of coal-fired power stations and a vote on proposed targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which may hasten the closure of many old coal plants.

The findings add to mounting evidence of the effect of outdoor air pollution on health. In October, the World Health Organization declared for the first time that outdoor air pollution was a direct cause of cancer, and a report commissioned by the WHO on the global burden of disease ranked such pollution as among the most important risk factors for chronic disease in Europe.


Heart failure

Coal-fired power plants release pollutants such as sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and fine particulates of soot in large quantities. These are known to contribute to cardiovascular diseases such as heart failure, and respiratory diseases such as emphysema.

A Europe-wide report launched earlier this year, also by HEAL, estimated the total cost to healthcare as a result of coal fumes in the European Union at €43 billion per year.

Fumes from coal-burning plants can travel thousands of kilometres, so they affect large swathes of the population, says Michal Krzyzanowski of King’s College London. But even small changes in the amount of harmful particulates in the air could make a huge difference to health risks, he says.

“At the moment coal is cheap, so countries are tempted to stay with it rather than invest in more expensive, cleaner fuel sources such as gas and renewables,” Krzyzanowski says. “It’s a political decision.”