Dive Summary:
- Power plant emissions are the cause of approximately 52,000 deaths annually in the continental U.S., according to a new study [Editor's Note: Report is paywalled] by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
- Power plant emissions cause over 29,000 premature deaths annually in the PJM region, even more than pollution from vehicles, which causes over 23,000 deaths.
- States with lots of coal-fired plants, such as Kentucky, West Virginia and Ohio, had the highest mortality rates caused by electric generation.
- People whose deaths are caused by air polllution typically die 10 years before they normally would, said Steven Barrett, an assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics and co-author of the report.
From the article:
The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 74 million people in the U.S. are exposed to levels of PM2.5 higher than permitted by the Clean Air Act and that more than 131 million live in regions not compliant with ozone limits. The EPA computed the costs for the implementation of the 1990 Clean Air Act to be about $65 billion from 1990 to 2020, potentially avoiding 230,000 premature deaths in 2020.
