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Coal Power Killed Half a Million People in U.S. over Two Decades
November 25, 2023 • by Marc Airhart
Deaths from coal were highest in 1999, but by 2020 decreased by about 95%, as coal plants have installed scrubbers or shut down.

It’s no secret that small particles in the air from coal-fired power plants are harmful, but a new paper published in Science shows these particles are more than twice as harmful as previously thought. In fact, since 1999 coal-fired power plants in two states—Ohio and Pennsylvania—caused more than 103,000 deaths nationwide.

A team of researchers from six universities, including The University of Texas at Austin, examined data from the United States’ 480 coal-fired power plants and found that from 1999–2020, approximately 460,000 deaths in the Medicare population were attributable to coal electricity-generating emissions, a number far higher than previous estimates. The researchers also ranked coal plants and found the 10 deadliest were each associated with more than 5,000 deaths. The research does not account for any additional deaths among individuals under age 65 or among uninsured people.

Senior author Cory Zigler, an associate professor in UT’s Department of Statistics and Data Sciences and founding member of the UT Center for Health & Environment: Education and Research, conceived of the overall analysis strategy of developing a new air quality model and deploying it for large-scale epidemiological studies. He noted one bit of good news: Deaths from coal were highest in 1999 but by 2020 decreased by about 95%, as coal plants installed scrubbers or shut down.



https://cns.utexas.edu/news/research/coal-power-killed-half-million-people-us-over-two-decades