Coal is not clean and never will be

Coal is a sedimentary rock comprising organic and inorganic material laid down over millions of years. It is therefore a concentrated sink for certain minerals and compounds as well as the carbon that is burnt to generate power.

Coal contains toxic heavy metals – including, lead, arsenic, mercury.

We refer to these as ‘toxic’ because of their effect on living organisms. In humans, for example, lead causes nervous system disorders, mental problems and retardation and general ‘failure to thrive’. The acute lead poisoning of children at Mt Isa is a case in point. Children are the most affected because of their greater rates of absorption of minerals and their increased need for minerals due to rapid growth. Poor diets, lacking in needed minerals such as calcium, magnesium and zinc, lead to great absorption of alternatives, such as lead, or mercury, or cadmium if they are in the environment from coal dust pollution. When deep sedimentary basin geochemistry meets biochemistry, the result is chronic poisoning that affects children’s health for the restof their lives.

Coal contains excessive amounts of other metals:

such as manganese, chromium III (thence oxidized, once on the surface of the planet, to the more harmful chromium VI of Erin Brokovich fame), antimony, selenium, iron, zinc. Some of these we need in minute amounts – manganese helps ‘creaky knees’ for example – but not in excess amounts whereby they block chemical pathways and act as biological poisons. In excess, nutrient minerals can become anti-nutrient and toxic. Excess metal effects mimic many diseases – excess manganese is implicated in Parkinsons and sugar dysregulation (diabetic symptoms); excess copper is implicated in mood disorders, the list is growing longer as we only just begin to see how this all works. The emerging discipline of Geomedicine encompasses such work. The government’s own figures from the National Pollutant Inventory (www.npi.gov.au) show that Singleton receives 70.3 tonnes of heavy and toxic minerals each year from coal mining. This does not include the dust burdens, the effects of sulphides, fluorides, silicas and a host of other toxics contained within coal.

Such toxic loads are not conducive to the good health of any community.

Coal contains radioactive elements such as thorium and uranium.

Also, coal fired power stations emit around 3 x the radiation of nuclear power stations. The government does not test for radioactives in coal as yet in terms of NPI data.

Details are to be found in coal analyses, generally after washing which removes some of the ‘impurities’ but then the water used, and resulting slurries contain these toxics and their safe storage becomes paramount. This is why environmental groups do not want such wastes in rivers or to compromise aquifer systems. Once these minerals are exhumed to the surface, they can not be put back in the sealed environment that held them safe. The toxic genie is out of the secure storage underground and you get bioaccumulation, biomagnification and bioagrregation across the food chain and in all living organisms in contact with such pollution.

Coal contains carcinogenic organic compounds such as benzene and derivatives.

We already know these are harmful to human health, particularly in terms of cancer.

Most of these ‘impurities’ are found in minute amounts in coal known as parts per million. However, we are talking about the exhumation of millions of tonnes of coal and millions more tonnes of shattered rock and ‘overburden’ a year, much of it containing toxic materials which can be liberated, via Acid Mine Drainage when exposed to rain. AMD continues to pollute long after mines have been closed as has been demonstrated recently in the Grose River in the Blue Mountains where biotoxic levels of zinc are liberated from an old coal mine, and as can be seen leaking from the other 570 unremediated mines in NSW.

The NSW government admits, most of these mines will never be returned to previous condition. Their scientists know, it is indeed an impossible task. This toxic ‘humpty dumpty’ can not be put back together again.

Every ~ 100t coal wagon contains nearly 1kg of lead. 10 millionths of a gram of lead is the current upper limit for safe exposure, this is a speck on a teaspoon. The WHO believes now there is no safe level for lead exposure. This is why coal trains, like any other load, let alone one that is toxic, should be covered to prevent easy contamination by coal dusts of people’s homes, children’s playgrounds and schools, vegetable gardens, crops and drinking water sources. The Queensland Government has already run successful trials into dust suppression techniques which limit coal dust from wagons. QLD and NSW are yet to implement any solution despite being fully aware of the problem. 

Adults are not immune to the effects of toxic and excess metals. Pregnant women are particularly affected of course, especially if lacking in calcium for the reasons stated before. The elderly are affected because of poorer nutritional processing and the exacerbation of any existing chronic health problems especially lung and cardiovascular diseases. Heavy metal poisoning can alter DNA which means that the effect is multi-generational. Cadmium can replace zinc in the testicles of fit young men with poor diets, it is already implicated in prostate cancer, and cadmium can certainly affect the quality and quantity of sperm produced – by competing with health-giving zinc (needed in minute amounts), as well as contributing to kidney disease and hypertension later in life. 

Hendryx and researchers from the US (University of West Virginia) have recently (2008) concluded from their studies that coal communities experience:

• 70% increase in kidney disease
• 64% increase in lung disease
• 30% increase in hypertension.

In Australia, the independent Hunter Valley Research Foundation’s 2008/09 report into Newcastle and The Hunter reveals:

• an increased mortality for people in the Hunter Valley compared to NSW in general
• an decreased life expectancy for babies born now compared to NSW in general
• increased rates of lung, skin and colorectal cancer and deaths thereof compared to NSW in general
• increased rates of death from breast, cervical and prostate cancer compared to NSW in general. 

These findings are not surprising. We have not discussed the effects of fine particulate silica dusts for example; of nitrous oxides or fluorines in the air or the ‘success’ of containment of fly ash (the multimillion tonne per year residue from burning coal in power stations, that is now even more concentrated with these contaminants) so that it does not get into water systems or our food chain. 

These findings will not only be a result of heavy metal exposure of course, and our testing for same and understanding of heavy and other metal toxicity is only in its infancy by comparison to what is known about nutritional minerals. However, whilst science plays ‘catch up’, the combination of sustained pollutant assault on the bodies and minds of people exposed to such materials – by air, by water, by contamination on food/crops/animals - should not be underestimated. Our mental and physical health services are already stretched to the limit, and a thorough understanding that coal is not clean, and never will be, will allow us to make choices so that coal communities, coal workers, their children and their children’s children do not continue to carry the health costs of massively increased mining development, long after the royalties and the mining have stopped.

Pauline Roberts is a researcher and alternative medicine practitioner who observes, on a regular basis, the low-dose, accumulative effects of toxic metals on human health. She is concerned at the continuing pollution of the land, radioactive contamination of the air and mining of water supplies caused by the short-term, expedient energy policies of the Australian government and its industry masters.