Phlegm Per Kilowatt
(Energy • Medical)
I didn’t sign a formal contract, but it looks to me as if I have agreed to get sick two to four times each year in exchange for cheap electricity.
I came to this conclusion after two recent events. First, I noticed today that the U.S. EPA apparently intends to enforce the Clean Air Act even in Texas. Second, I had to obtain copies of my own medical records because my doctor moved her practice and her old practice chose to hold patients’ records hostage (albeit for a lot less money if you recite certain choice HIPAA regulations).
It is entirely possible there is no relationship whatsoever between my medical records and the past serial lax enforcement of clean air regulations in Texas. I can’t prove jack.
Nevertheless, while perusing my medical records, I noticed the following: “Upper Respiratory Infection Exam, Date: 8-26-07,” “Upper Respiratory Infection Exam, Date: 10-11-07,” “Upper Respiratory Infection Exam, Date: 1-24-08,” “Upper Respiratory Infection Exam, Date: 9-30-08,” “Upper Respiratory Infection Exam, Date: 11-4-08…”
See a pattern? I hadn’t realized it, but for the past several years I’ve been seeing a doctor at least two or three times per year for the same thing. And that doesn’t count the times when I had something similar but got over it before I got around to going to the doctor – like now, when I’m recovering from an unpleasant upper respiratory malady that began during the Christmas holidays. (And keep in mind, the only thing I smoke is meat, and I don’t inhale.)
One other constant in my life for the past several years is that I began living within 15 miles of the huge and mostly coal-driven W.A. Parish power plant near beautiful downtown Thompsons, Texas. When current owner NRG bought the plant, their spokespersons began referring to it as one of the nation’s cleanest coal-fired plants. In a previous lifetime as a news reporter, I once expressed skepticism of this claim, but found it conceivably could be true if one is talking about “cleanest per megawatt-hour of electricity produced.”
Frankly, however, that means squat to people living within, say, 40 miles of Parish, because despite apparent considerable spending by NRG to improve the plant, it remains one of the biggest single sources of air pollution in the country, regardless of how clean it is “per megawatt.”
The most recently available comparative data I can find still shows Parish farting out 20 million tons of CO2 each year (that’s millions with an “m” and tons with a “t”). In 2007, the Parish plant ranked No. 5 on a list of the worst CO2 polluters in the U.S. Perhaps more to the point, especially for those who continue to question the validity of terming carbon as a pollutant, the plant ranked No. 10 on a list of the nation’s worst mercury polluters.
Despite this, I am not calling for the dismantling of the Parish plant. I am working on becoming a realist. I like electricity that comes from a socket in my walls. I would like it better if it were generated from sun shining on my roof’s solar panels, but solar still is much more expensive than the grid, plus I’d still have to eat Parish’s dust even if my personal electricity were clean as the proverbial whistle.
Plus I’m in the footprint of the Houston megalopolis, for Christ’s sake. One way or another, we’re all here for a little trickle-down from the Fossil Fuel Giants. The bulk of my income used to derive from services provided to one of the world’s largest oil producers, for instance. And now, almost all our money comes from, yes, a power plant operator. We started this dance with our eyes open.
So I’m not asking to get out of my disease-for-cheap-electricity contract. But is it too much to ask that the polluters surrounding me live up to the same clean-air standards already enforced in other parts of the country? How about if I only have to get sick once a year because of air pollution instead of three or four times? In exchange, you can raise my bill $30 a month to recoup the cost of your new pollution control devices. Is that a fair deal?
→ B.Dunn, Jan 06, 2010, 10 07 am
Not to accuse you of being any kind of scientist, Bob – but I am sure you know that CO2 is harmless, colorless, odorless – completely non-toxic. It can only be a problem in situations in which it excludes enough oxygen to cause hypoxia.
So the CO2 is not the root of your problem. If anything from the plant is, it would be much more likely to be the particulates, micron and lower in average diameter, which have been taking up more or less permanent residence throughout your respiratory system.
My advice to you is to begin smoking. Kools are really good in fighting problems like this. They work by killing you long before the deleterious effects of those prickly, pointy, dinky, little pieces of ash from burning coal.
jd
— jdallen Jan 6, 05:08 pm #
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I bet money you are, even if it can’t be proven either way.
Parts per hundred, parts per thousand, parts per million, parts per trillion…somewhere in a finite range of concentrations, there are some pieces of the crematorium’s customers are in there…not to mention all the dead animals we get whiffs of. All that crap is breathed in. Each breath leaves something.
Face it, dude. We is NASty.
jd
— jdallen Jan 9, 01:45 pm #
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