Now, before we can take this coal and burn it to produce electricity, it needs to be cleaned so the coal will burn better. Sounds great! There's only one little problem: every year this "cleaning" hoses off around 20,000 pounds of mercury from those little black lumps of coal.

"That's no biggie!" you say, because you know that this must be a process that the government closely regulates and controls because, after all, mercury is the second most toxic substance known to man (the honor of most toxic substance goes to plutonium, which happens to be used to make nuclear weapons), and it is very, very, very bad. 

But just what does mercury do to you? Well, mercury poisons your neurological system, and causes “behavioral” disorders including ADD, ADHD, Asperger’s, and Autism in children, and has been linked to a variety of diseases ranging from Gulf War Syndrome to Alzheimer’s in adults. My friend, if your child, parent, or someone you know and love suffers from any of those diseases, please run – do not walk – your browser over to www.generationrescue.org right now: mercury poisoning is treatable!

But again, it’s cool and we have no worries: Uncle Sam is watching out for us, right?

I hate to burst your bubble, friend, but there is virtually no regulation for these 20,000 pounds of mercury. It is "taken care of" however the coal industry sees fit. It gets dumped wherever it's convenient, polluting ground water, streams, etc. Yum!

But at least now we've got clean coal, ready to burn and make us some kilowatts so our kids can watch TV! So in goes the coal to the boilers where it's burned, heating up water into steam to turn the mighty turbines and generators that light up 52% of the U.S. of A. like a Christmas tree.

Oh, wait. Water. Did I just say “water”? For the turbines? Well, a 500-megawatt coal-fired power plant (there are some bigger and some smaller, but you’ll get the idea) needs about 2.2 billion gallons of fresh water every year. To put that in perspective, that's enough to fill up about 3,400 olympic size swimming pools, or enough for a city of about 250,000 people who love to flush toilets and take long showers.

Boy, and there goes the local fishing, too - SLURP! – as the little local fishies get sucked into the intakes while the survivors of that great big sucking thing wonder why the heck the water keeps getting warmer (see, once the steam cools off, it's sent to cooling ponds and then released back into the water supply, but it's usually not at the ambient temperature). And that screws up their migratory and reproductive cycles. So, yeah, water is a bit of an issue. Oops.

But hey, who cares? We've got electricity!

That's true, but we're not quite finished (you knew I was going to say that, didn't you?). See, when you burn stuff, you get "smoke", right? That's why coal power plants have those gigantic smokestacks. Remember, in the U.S. we're burning a billion tons of coal every year: that's a LOT of smoke!

"But wait!" you say. "I know that Uncle Sam has made the power utilities put scrubber thingies on all the coal plants to clean up the smoke. I have nothing to worry about!"

Hey, uh, bub? Remember that we're still dealing with the same set of folks who let 20,000 pounds or so of mercury get washed off of the coal every year before it even gets to the power plant. It's true that there are scrubber thingies on coal power plants. But those scrubbers don't eliminate the nasty stuff: they just pull some of it out of the smoke that goes up the stack and call the emissions "clean." It's all in the marketing, baby!

Now, you'd have to have been dead as a doornail if you haven't at least heard about the greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and sulphur compounds that go up and out the stacks of our beloved coal plants. And you know what? You don't have to believe that the carbon dioxide causes global warming. You don't have to believe that the sulphur compounds cause acid rain.

All you have to believe is - wait for it! - that U.S. coal power plants shoot around 100,000 pounds of our good friend mercury out their stacks and into the air that you and I breathe. Every year. And what goes up must come down: that mercury eventually falls in our lakes, streams, oceans, forests, cities, houses, and ourselves.

And remember: this big spray of mercury into the air is in addition to the 20,000 or so pounds already being dumped into the ground during the cleaning phase. For anybody who’s keeping count, we’re up to 120,000 pounds of mercury at this point, and we ain’t done yet, folks!

Wow! Imagine, 100,000 pounds of the world’s second most toxic substance getting pumped straight into the atmosphere for everyone's enjoyment! Isn’t that cool? Dr. Strangelove would be ecstatic.

Now, as an interesting detour, if you dig around on the EPA's "Clean Energy" site you can find the page for "Clean Energy - Electricity from Coal". On that page they note that "when coal is burned, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and mercury compounds are released. For that reason, coal-fired boilers are required to have control devices to reduce the amount of emissions that are released."

Okay, that's great! But then they go on to list how much of those compounds are released into the atmposphere: "The average emission rates in the United States from coal-fired generation are: 2,249 lbs/MWh of carbon dioxide, 13 lbs/MWh of sulfur dioxide, and 6 lbs/MWh of nitrogen oxides."

Hey, aren't we missing something? Where is the emission rate for all that mercury? I guess it must not be important to list that, even though the link from that page to a glossary describes mercury as "a toxic heavy metal that is a byproduct of the combustion of fossil fuels, especially coal. Mercury and compounds containing mercury can accumulate in the environment and are highly toxic to humans and animals if inhaled or swallowed. Exposure can permanently damage the brain, kidneys, and fetuses."

Gee, I guess the webmaster must've just accidentally left mercury off the list. Hmmm... 

Anyway, I thought all that mercury stuff was pretty darn scary. But it gets even better: according to a report by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Coal Combustion: Nuclear Resource or Danger), coal-fired power plants “are the major sources of radioactive materials released to the environment.”

Did you get that? Go back and read that last sentence again before you go on. Hey, we thought Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were something - check this stuff out!

The study was based on older data for estimated releases by 154 U.S. coal fired plants in 1982: 801 tons (yeah, TONS) of uranium (containing 11,371 pounds of uranium-235, which is what you make atomic fission bombs with) and 1,971 tons of thorium. Worldwide, releases amounted to about 3,640 tons of uranium (including 51,700 pounds of uranium-235) and 8,960 tons of thorium. On top of that, our friendly neighborhood coal plants release radium, radon, polonium, bismuth, and lead when they burn all that coal.

I also found it interesting that one discussion point in the study was on the potential feasibility of capturing enough uranium-235 from coal combustion to use as the basis for an enrichment program to produce weapons-grade uranium for nuclear weapons. 

Holy crap.

But not to worry: a U.S. Geologic Survey report tells us that these emissions of radioactive materials “should not be sources of alarm.” According to the report, even though “radioactive elements from coal and fly ash may come in contact with the general public when they are dispersed in air and water or are included in commercial products that contain fly ash…this exposure is equivalent to a minor...increase above the radiation from the natural environment.”

Well, okay. Maybe those thousands of tons of radioactive material flying out of the stacks has absolutely nothing to do with the incidence of cancer we see around us nowadays (Lord knows that there are plenty of other potential causes!). Maybe it’s all just genetic predisposition and red dye number two. But I just can't help thinking that sending this stuff into the air where we'll breathe it and get it all over and inside ourselves isn't really such a "hot" idea, if you'll pardon the pun.

Okay, moving onward: the burning is done and all that nasty stuff is all gone, right? Poof!

Umm, nope. Remember all those scrubber thingies that make the coal smoke “clean[er]”? Well, have you ever seen the goo that’s left in the dirty water tank of a steam cleaner after it’s been run over a filthy carpet? Think of that on the scale we’ve been talking about with coal (burning a billion tons a year) and with all the nasty goodies we know are in coal: it’s called “scrubber sludge.” And our coal plants produce almost 24 million tons of the stuff every year, almost 95% of which is dumped into landfills and holding ponds. Yummy!

On top of that, our coal plants produce over 59 million tons per year of what’s called “fly ash,” tiny glassy globes of incombustible stuff from the coal that’s caught (well, a lot of it, anyway) by filters in the stack. About 43 million tons of that winds up in landfills or holding ponds. The rest goes up the stacks for us to breathe in later on.

Finally, we have 18 million tons of what’s known as “bottom ash” or “boiler slag” (don’t these terms just rock?). That’s the wonderful stuff that’s left in the boiler that didn’t go up the stack. Over 11 million tons gets dumped into holding ponds or landfills.

Between those three sets of residue (over 100 million tons, total), there’s – guess what! – over 86,000 more pounds of mercury! For those of you keeping score, we're right around 200,000 pounds of mercury being poured into the environment - that would be our air, soil, and water, folks - every year. Oh, and don't forget that every time you take a breath you're probably snorking up some of this good stuff, too.

Oh, and did I mention that 16 million tons of fly ash, 7 million tons of boiler slag, and 1.6 million tons of scrubber sludge gets “reused” in various building materials? And – you guessed it! – there’s nothing and nobody there to filter out the mercury and other yummy heavy metal stuff. Whoops.

Now, what about how "cheap" coal is? Well, the average price for U.S. coal in 2005 ranged from about $17 to $36 per ton. That sounds pretty cheap.

But then we get to the "hidden costs," particularly health care and human mortality (that would be "dying"). According to a 2004 study by Clear the Air called Dirty Air, Dirty Power, power plant pollution each year:

• Shortens the lives of 24,000 people, including 2,800 from lung cancer
• Causes hundreds of thousands of Americans to suffer respiratory and cardiac problems from the fine particles released by power plants, resulting in thousands of emergency calls and hospital visits
• Is responsible for nearly 40,000 non-fatal heart attacks

Folks, these aren't some generic statistics they're talking about. Those are people! You, me, our kids, our parents, neighbors, and friends. And how many billions of dollars are we - yes, we! - paying in additional health care costs to make up for our "cheap" coal?

So, my friend, let’s recap, shall we?

• Coal power plants annually release about 200,000 pounds of mercury, half of which goes right up into the air we breathe and settles over the land and water to pollute the food we eat and water we drink. The other half – held in the 100 million tons of coal waste products – gets dumped into landfills, old quarries, holding ponds, or is made into building materials that go into our homes and businesses.
• Mercury is the second most toxic substance on the planet (right behind plutonium), and is responsible for neurological disorders such as Autism, and has also been linked to adult diseases such as Alzheimers.
• There is virtually no regulation for controlling the mercury or other toxic metals and substances beyond the stack filters and scrubbers (which were grudgingly added after years of yammering by environmental groups).
• Thousands of tons of radioactive materials, primarily uranium and thorium, plus other toxic by-products like radon, polonium, bismuth, and lead get pumped out the stacks into the air each year.
• A 500 megawatt coal power plant uses on the order of 2 billion gallons of fresh water per year, enough to supply a city of 250,000 people.
• Mining coal leads to the deaths of a couple dozen U.S. miners in accidents each year, plus another 1,500 or so who die from black lung disease, plus thousands more who live on in suffering from it.
• Each year, pollution from coal plants costs billiions of dollars in health care for hundreds of thousands of Americans, and is linked to nearly 30,000 premature deaths.

If you want to see an absolutely awesome depiction of power plant pollution and some of the effects it has on us human lab rats, zip on over to Clear The Air's Pollution Map!

Now, at this point, if your brain is still firing a few neurons, you should be asking yourself if we can do away with coal-generated electricity. Could we really manage without it?

My answer? Hell, yes! I told you in our last podcast (Casting My Vote for Green Power) how you can shop around for cleaner energy sources: wind power, solar energy, wave energy, biomass, and so on. If you vote with your wallet and your ballot for truly clean energy, you will make a real difference and can help us get rid of all the awful stuff that goes with coal-based energy. We can do it if we just try!