Hospital Visits Declined After Sulfur Dioxide Reductions from Louisville-Area Coal Plants

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13042020/asthma-air-pollution-sulfur-dioxide-louisville-coal-power-plant

By James Bruggers
Apr 13, 2020


By taking advantage of a "natural experiment" brought on by the closure of one coal-fired power plant and the addition of new pollution controls at others in the area, health researchers have documented how lowering air pollution improves the lives of asthma patients.

Led by Columbia University's Joan A. Casey, an environmental health sciences professor, the team calculated a 55 percent reduction in the amount of lung-irritating pollutants in the air over Louisville beginning in the spring of 2015. The reduction came after the closure of Louisville Gas and Electric's Cane Run facility and the installation of sulfur dioxide scrubbers at its Mill Creek plant and another, separately owned plant in Rockport, Indiana.

The researchers found that there were nearly 400 fewer hospital admissions or emergency room visits for asthma attacks in Louisville in the year following the closure and the addition of pollution controls.

Tapping into data from an earlier research project, the researchers also found a 17 percent drop in the use of inhalers by 207 asthma patients in the month after additional scrubbers were installed at Mill Creek in 2016.

•••••

Cleaner air results in healthier people with a better chance to fight off new viruses that attack the lungs, said Smith, director of the Center for Healthy Air, Water and Soil at the University of Louisville's Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute.

In fact, new Harvard research indicates that the death rate from the new coronavirus is higher in counties with higher levels of fine particulate matter pollution, which also comes from coal-fired power plants.

•••••