By Benjamin Israël for the Pembina Institute.

In November 2016, the Government of Canada announced its intention to phase out coal as a source of power. Since then, many voices have misrepresented or questioned the impact that coal emissions have on Canadians’ health and our environment.

In order to clear the air, we’ve answered four of the biggest questions being asked about the link between an accelerated phase-out of coal-fired power and human health.

1. How harmful are emissions from coal-fired power on Canadians’ health?

Coal-fired power plants are a contributor to a range of harmful air pollutants. When compared to other electricity generating options, coal power produces unmatched volumes of sulphur dioxides (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), fine particulate matters (PM2.5) and mercury — to name only the most harmful pollutants associated with coal.

Each of these pollutants have been consistently linked to adverse outcomes on human health, and the effects may be worsened when combined with other pollutants. For some of these pollutants, there is no safe threshold at which humans can be exposed — meaning even low exposure can have implications for human health.

These findings are repeatedly confirmed by a range of authorities including World Health Organization, Health Canada, and the European Union.

For each unit of electrity fed into the grid, Canada’s coal power fleet emitted nearly 60 times more SO2 and 4 times more NOx than existing gas-fired plants in 2014. Due to more stringent standards and improved technology, new natural gas plants emit 18 times less NOx than existing coal-fired plants and virtually no SO2. Renewable energy does not emit any NOx or SO2.

The health impacts of these emissions include increases in respiratory ailments, diseases and premature death (attributed to exposure to SO2 and NOx), and the development of asthma during childhood (attributed to exposure to NO2 and PM2.5). Impacts also lead to increased adverse reproductive outcomes such as congenital heart defects and preterm delivery (attributed to exposure to SO2).

Health impacts also include chronic cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, including lung cancer, heart failure and cardiac arrest (attributed to exposure to PM2.5 produced from SO2 and NOx), and a reduction in cognitive abilities and motor skills (attributed to exposure to mercury).

These impacts have significant implications for Canada’s health care system, as it leads to increased emergency room visits and hospitalizations, and a higher need for medications to treat these diseases.  

2. How do scientists and public health professionals estimate the impact of coal-fired power on Canadians’ health?

There are a few studies looking at the social and health impact of coal power in the Canadian context, with the most detailed analysis conducted by Environment Canada in 2012. This analysis was done to examine the impact of the 2012 federal greenhouse gas regulations for coal units.

The Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement (RIAS) provides a cost-benefit analysis using state-of-the-art models from Environment Canada and Health Canada to estimate how coal power affects local outdoor air quality by changing the concentration of air pollutants, and estimating the related impact to the health of Canadians.

Often, foes of the coal phase-out neglect to account for the fact that some of these air pollutants are chemically transformed into other pollutants after being released. Further, some misrepresent the Canadian air quality system and requirements of it or even challenge the fact that air pollutants emissions have an impact on human health in the first place.

Building on the results from the 2012 Environment Canada analysis, the Pembina Institute concluded in our 2016 report “Out with the coal, in the new,” that accelerating the retirement of Canada’s 35 coal-fired units by 2030 could save as much as 1,008 Canadian lives, avoid 128,800 asthma episodes, and prevent an estimated nearly $5 billion in health-related costs between now and 2035.

The numbers don’t lie: it’s a no brainer for Canada to eliminate our reliance on coal and put the health of Canadians first.

4 Things You Need to Know About How #Coal Affects Human Health https://t.co/MhDL6b5uUQ #bcpoli #cdnpoli #ableg #YYC #YVR @Pembina @ben_yyc pic.twitter.com/e5lsRLebi8

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) March 16, 2017

3. Why isn’t Canada just equipping coal plants with technology to reduce pollution, instead of phasing it out?

There were regulations developed in the 2000s requiring installing technologies to tangibly reduce emissions of SO2, NOx, PM2.5, and mercury for power generation facilities. While being applicable to all new power plants, these controls are only required for existing plants if they want to keep operating past the end of their life.

This means that the majority of coal plants currently operating in Canada do not have these technologies installed yet; and for Alberta it means that 82 per cent of coal-fired electricity in 2015 came from units not equipped with the latest pollution controls. Equipping all Canadian coal units with the latest pollution controls to reduce air pollutants (other than greenhouse gas emissions) would cost an estimated 12 billion dollars — enough to replace Alberta and Saskatchewan’s 24 coal units with clean, non-emitting wind power generation.

4. Aren’t other countries still using coal?

Recent policy decisions at the federal and provincial level align Canada with the growing trend of jurisdictions around the world that are committed to moving away from coal.

Fellow trendsetters include New York state by 2020; France by 2023; the U.K., the Netherlands, and Denmark by 2025; and the state of Oregon by 2030. In many U.S. states, companies are shutting down their coal plants for economic reasons. In the cases of China and Germany, two countries often cited for their reliance on coal, recent data suggests tangible reductions in coal generation for the past few years.

China recently announced it is halting construction on coal-fired plants in 15 regions across the country.

When the full costs of coal (i.e., social, health and climate costs) are added to the public balance sheet, phasing out coal-fired power is in the public interest. To ensure these policies continue to have a net-benefit for people, governments should direct efforts towards supporting communities and workers in transitioning industries. Many countries now agree: in 2017, coal’s place is in our history books — not in our energy systems.

Photo: Les Stone, Greenpeace

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The University of Alberta and TransAlta, a major Alberta utility company and coal producer, struck an agreement for the company to pay the university $54,000 to research the health impacts of coal-fired power plants near Edmonton, according to documents obtained by DeSmog Canada.

When TransAlta published the research — a study entitled Investigation of Fine Particulate Matter Characteristics and Sources in Edmonton, Alberta — on its website last spring the company initially stated it had sponsored the work, co-authored by Warren Kindzierski and fellow University of Alberta professor Aynul Bari.

But that sponsorship disclaimer was abruptly scrubbed from the company’s website.

Documents released to DeSmog Canada through Freedom of Information legislation show TransAlta did indeed enter into a sponsorship agreement with the University of Alberta that provided Kindzierski, as principle investigator, $54,000 to conduct the research.

TransAlta says that although it did provide the funds to the university, the university did not use the funds to support Kindzierski’s research.

“They kept our funds but did not use them towards the study, they redirected them elsewhere,” Stacy Hatcher, spokesperson for TransAlta, told DeSmog Canada.

Hatcher said because TransAlta did provide the funds to the university “we erred on the side of being completely transparent and stating up front that we had paid for it as that had been the offer.”

“It was a mistake on our part not to circle back and correct the news story once we learned the university did not accept the funding,” she added.

The undocumented movement of industry money on university campuses is nothing new.

Private sponsorship agreements, gifts, grants and donations have all been used as ways to financially support research, resulting in what some critics have identified as a problematic purchase of academic credibility by corporations.

In this instance, the question comes down to whether and how private funds are influencing public conversations about coal-fired power generation in Alberta.

Industry-Friendly Study Used to Fight Coal Phase-Out

The study, made available to the public on TransAlta’s site in late 2015, bears the branding of the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health and concludes the high number of coal-fired power plants near the city of Edmonton doesn’t negatively impact the health of local residents.

The research has been used by TransAlta to push for an alternative to the Alberta government’s plan to phase-out coal by 2030 (which is no small feat: Alberta uses more coal for power production than all other Canadian provinces combined).

In its submission to the Alberta Climate Change Advisory Panel TransAlta referred to the research as “commissioned independent work through the University of Alberta” that was done “in response to continued unsubstantiated claims that coal-fired generation was a major contributor to Edmonton’s air quality events, and a rationale for the need to accelerate the retirement of coal units.”

“You will see that the research shows minimal airshed impacts from operation of coal-fired generation to the west,” the submission read.

The research has also been used by vocal coal advocates, such as Robin Campbell, president of the Canadian Association of Coal, to argue against a coal phase-out.

TransAlta owns and operates Canada’s largest surface strip coal mine, the Highvale Mine. The 12,600 hectare coal mine, managed by TransAlta’s wholly-owned subsidiary Sunhills Mining, produces 13 million tonnes of thermal grade coal each year which is used to power three of TransAlta’s power stations. Since 2006, TransAlta stopped mining operations at two additional coal mines and as a result now purchases coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana.

TransAlta (burns coal and) paid U of A to conduct a health study (about coal). But there’s no connection, OK? https://t.co/SimArg2eOH #ableg

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) November 8, 2016

Corporate Sponsorship Agreements Commonplace

Sponsorship agreements between the University of Alberta and TransAlta are commonplace, Hatcher said: “TransAlta has a relationship with the university, and we have provided non-directed funding in the past for research and academic projects.”

Documents released to DeSmog Canada confirm this, showing TransAlta provided at least another $175,000 to the university between 2013 and 2015 through additional sponsorship arrangements.

However, the retroactive decision to ‘redirect’ the Kindzierski study funds raises questions about transparency and accountability.

The university’s Research Services Office, which appears as a signatory on the TransAlta sponsorship agreement, said it could not provide comment or release information regarding sponsorships.

A woman at the Research Services Office said simply, “We would not release any information to you of any kind” and recommended all inquiries be directed to the principle investigator: Kindzierski.

“No funds were expended [on that study],” Kindzierski told DeSmog Canada. “They were used after the study was done to support a post doctorate RA (research assistant) on other research activities.”

“Are you familiar with soft dollar funded positions? Why don’t you go ahead and learn about that?” Kindzierski said during a phone interview.

‘Soft money’ positions at universities are those funded by grants, awards and other forms of sponsorship that are usually impermanent and must be regularly sought after through application processes. Alternately, ‘hard money’ positions usually refer to tenure-track positions that are funded by tuition, endowments, government funding and philanthropy.

“All faculties, all programs, all departments at all universities have soft dollar funded positions, totally above board and everything,” he added.

Kindzierski said the research, which was published online without going through a full peer-reviewed process, has since been peer-reviewed, accepted and published at three “high-quality impact journals.”

When asked which journals the research appeared in, he responded, “I can name them but I have no desire to give them to you.”

“Go search. That’s good homework for you.”

“You’re no different than a reporter that is too lazy to find this stuff themselves,” Kindzierski said during the interview.

A similar paper by Kindzierski recently appeared in the journal Environmental Pollution, a peer-reviewed publication, but DeSmog Canada was unable to find the exact study in question published anywhere other than TransAlta’s website.

Documentation released to DeSmog Canada via Freedom of Information shows Kindzierski sent TransAlta a proposal of the study before research was undertaken. Records show this proposal was sent to Don Wharton, TransAlta’s vice president of policy and sustainable development, at TransAlta’s request in May 2015. The sponsorship agreement was signed in July 2015. The contents of the study proposal, sent from Kindzierski to Wharton, were redacted in the released documents.

Coal Pollution Still Dangerous to Health, Physician Says

Critics have called the independence of the study into question, saying TransAlta’s planned sponsorship could have introduced bias in the research questions pursued.

“I think after they published it they realized [there were going to be] a lot of people making a stink that there was a conflict of interest,” Joe Vipond, physician with the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), told DeSmog Canada.

“The optics were quite bad as far as bias is concerned in funding the study and that’s why they moved to make the money trail less obvious.”

Vipond is concerned about the way the study has been used to influence public debate about coal-fired power plants.

“It really distorts the conversation,” he said.

“I work in the medical field… and there is so much evidence of how funding and bias impacts conclusions in the scientific literature in health.”

But, he added, the average person isn’t taught to look as critically at this kind of literature as health professionals are.

“I think it’s very hard. People underestimate the power of money.”

He added that working in the medical field also exposes him to evidence that coal pollution affects respiratory health.

The Kindzierski study goes to great lengths to say pollution in the Edmonton airshed isn’t due to coal-fired power plants, Vipond said.

Recently Vipond co-authored a report, Breathing in the Benefits, released by the Pembina Institute, the Asthma Society, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and the Lung Association, that estimated the phase-out of coal by 2030 in Alberta would avoid approximately 600 premature deaths, 500 emergency room visits, 80,000 asthma episodes, two million days of respiratory difficulty for individuals and nearly $3 billion in health benefits.

A previous report from the same group of organizations, A Costly Diagnosis: Subsidizing Coal Power with Albertans’ Health, found pollution from coal combustion affects respiratory and cardiovascular health as well as the central nervous system. The report says exposure to these pollutants can result in chronic respiratory illness and premature death.

“There is such a broad mix of emissions that come from coal: SOx, NOx, particulate matter 2.5 and mercury,” Vipond said.

“Then there’s a whole host of others like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and benzenes. That mix comes out of the stack and there is a lot of evidence for how [those pollutants] pollute lungs and the evidence on the impacts to cardiovascular health is even better.”

Particulate matter 2.5 is so fine, Vipond said, it gets into your lungs and can dissolve immediately into the bloodstream.

Andrew Read, environmental policy analyst with the Pembina Institute and contributor to the Breathing in the Benefits report, told DeSmog Canada there are no safe levels of particulate matter 2.5.

“Particulate matter doesn’t have a lower threshold where health impacts aren’t identified,” he said. “There is no argument that burning coal for electricity does not have substantial health impacts.”

Read added that reality should influence how we think about the future of coal-fired power.

Source: Pembina Institute

“The fact that there is no safe level of exposure to pollutants that are emitted by coal electricity is really important to consider,” he said. “If we expect to grow the economy and add industry to the province we have to remove some of these sources of emissions.”

The Kindzierski study produced for TransAlta “was really a political piece,” Read said.

“That’s the main frustration with the Kindzierski study — he could have added to the conversation or contributed in a way that added to the discussion but didn’t.”

Vipond said a presentation by Kindzierski to the Air and Waste Management Association found the short-term presence of particulate matter in the atmosphere resulted in fewer hospital visits for heart attacks.

“The conclusion was breathing coal-fired pollution is good for your health,” Vipond said.

“My feeling on the matter is that people who already have an agenda then go to find evidence that goes to back up that agenda. I think that’s true of humanity: it’s what we do.”

Vipond published a rebuttal of the Kindzierski study, saying there were major flaws in the methodology, including using limited air quality inputs and wind pattern information.

“I was annoyed [Kindzierski’s study] was out there and annoyed no one was challenging it.”

Research Shows Industry Funding Influences Academic Research

While industry funding doesn’t necessarily influence scientific research, a broad survey of research shows that it often does, according to Garry Gray, assistant professor of Sociology at the University of Victoria.

“If we just look at the outcomes [of research] — and that’s where we should focus — if we look at meta-analyses of funding, we see this in many areas over and over again, the source of funding does matter,” Gray told DeSmog Canada.

Gray spent three years as a research fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard’s Law School studying unethical behaviour in public interest institutions and conducting interviews with researchers in the field of public health and medicine.

His research (which he presents cogently in this TEDx talk) found that, yes, where research money comes from does indeed influence research outcomes.

“There is definitely a funding effect bias that takes place in research, especially when you can show where the funding sources are coming from.”

Gray’s research found that in often minor and subtle ways, researchers found ways to make their findings palatable to their funders.

“It doesn’t mean people were doing unethical research,” Gray said, “it means they were maybe framing their questions in certain ways or asking question A and not question B.”

Gray added universities are trying to better manage the problem of conflict of interest funding, but said they stop short of actually eliminating those funding relationships.

“I think there are a lot of problems today around research funding relationships,” he said.

Many of those ethical problems are not fully resolved by simply asking researchers to sign conflict of interest disclosure forms, he added.

There is often little transparency in how universities accept funding, Gray said, adding that can complicate the issue of public trust.

“Trust is definitely at stake,” he said. “There is this idea that universities are independent and this idea they are, for the most part, serving the public good. So there is this more implicit trust that we have for a project that comes out of the university.”

Yet with increasing amounts of private funds on university campuses, researchers may not be asking “the tougher questions” that are likely to benefit the general public.

“The question is, if we continue to shift funding models, who is going to ask those questions that are not going to be of interest to companies and industry and those types of funders?”

Laurie Adkin, associate professor in the University of Alberta’s Department of political science, told DeSmog Canada there are a lot of concerns about universities’ increasing reliance on corporate funds.

“It has been rather difficult to document the amount of corporate funding for individual researchers and their projects,” Adkins, who is a researcher with the Corporate Mapping Project, said.

“Partly because that information isn’t published anywhere and partly because it is difficult to record unless there is some sort of public announcement made.”

A request for comment from Samantha Pearson, director of corporate and foundation relations at the University of Alberta, went unanswered.

As a part of her research Adkin maps funding of energy-related research at the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary.

There is a significant amount of funding from the fossil fuel industry but also from the federal government at the University of Alberta, Adkin said, adding “a lot of that funding has been going into social licence research or prolonging the life of fossil fuels rather than going into renewable energies.”

“Of course in Alberta the University of Alberta has, at least under its previous president, billed itself as a flagship university for fossil fuel research,” she said.

The University of Alberta used to report industry funding but has since merged that category with funding from public institutions in its annual reporting, so there is no easy way to decipher where funding is coming from.

“You don’t know what faculty is getting what share or what research is getting funded,” she said.

Adkin said the question of the appropriateness of this practice is never raised.

“This is viewed as the model for what everyone should be doing.”

University of Alberta TransAlta Sponsorship Agreement for Kindzierski Coal Study FOI 2016 by DeSmog Canada on Scribd

Update: This piece was updated Thursday, November 10 at 11:46 a.m. to reflect TransAlta’s use of Kindzierski’s research to push for an alternative to Alberta’s Climate Change Plan, not to explicitly argue against the coal phase-out.

With files from Michael Fisher. 

Image: Emissions from a coal-fired power plant chimney in Germany. Photo: Patrick via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

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Chemicals released into the air and water during fracking operations may result in human health problems ranging from birth defects to decreased semen quality, a U.S study has found.

University of Missouri researcher Susan Nagel and colleagues from the Institute for Health and the Environment and the Center for Environmental Health conducted the most extensive review to date of research on fracking by-products and effects on human reproductive and environmental health. They concluded that exposure to chemicals used in fracking may be harmful to human health.

The paper, Reproductive and Developmental Effects of Chemicals Associated with Unconventional Oil and Natural Gas Operations, published in the peer-reviewed journal Reviews on Environmental Health recommends further study.

“We examined more than 150 peer-reviewed studies reporting on the effects of chemicals used in unconventional oil and gas operations and found evidence to suggest there is cause for concern for human health,” Nagel said.

“Further, we found that previous studies suggest that adult and early life exposure to chemicals associated with unconventional oil and gas operations can result in adverse reproductive health and developmental defects in humans.”

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing by pressurized liquid, is used to release natural gas from underground rock. A high pressure fluid, usually made up of chemicals and sand suspended in water, is injected into deep rock formations to create cracks, making vast caches of natural gas, previously trapped in buried rock, accessible.

Over the last decade, as the practice has become more common in Canada and the U.S., concerns have grown about contamination of ground water, depletion of fresh water, air quality, gas blowouts and the possibility that fracking will trigger earthquakes.

In north eastern B.C., where there are vast reserves of shale gas, controversy has raged and the use of river and lake water for fracking has been challenged in the B.C. Supreme Court by a coalition of environmental groups.

The University of Missouri-led study looked at previous research on air and water near fracking operations and concluded that exposure to fracking-caused pollution may be linked to health problems in humans and animals, including infertility, miscarriage, impaired fetal growth, birth defects and reduced semen quality.

“There are far fewer human studies than animal studies, however, taken together, the studies did show that humans can be harmed by these chemicals released from fracking,” said Nagel, an associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and women’s health at the University of Missouri School of Medicine.

“There is a striking need for continued research on unconventional oil and gas processes and chemicals and the health outcomes in people.”

Photo: Maryland Sierra Club via Flickr

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Never swim in the Ottawa River if it has rained during the previous 48 hours, recommends Meredith Brown, the executive director of Ottawa Riverkeeper.

The non-profit group is raising public awareness about raw sewage pouring into the popular recreational river after rainstorms or snow melts. Making matters worse, on the Quebec side of the river, there is a lack of adequate testing for fecal coliform bacteria levels at beaches, Brown said.

The problem is combined sewer overflows — pipes that carry both storm water and untreated sewage. These systems were built in many Canadian cities between 1880 and 1960.

Usually the liquid goes to treatment plants, but, when volumes threaten to swamp plants, the untreated mixture is diverted into the river to prevent flooding and sewer backups.

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“Some combined sewers rarely overflow, while others overflow every time it rains, “ says a City of Ottawa information sheet.

It is a problem that is gaining increasing attention from those who kayak, swim, sail or paddleboard in the river, Brown said.

“Once people find out, they are disgusted,” she said. “People are starting to think of this as a moral issue.”

Ottawa Riverkeeper has teamed up with Mountain Equipment Co-op this summer to raise awareness of the issue and encourage outdoor enthusiasts to join them in calling on the cities of Ottawa and Gatineau to report every time untreated sewage is released into the river.

Many people do not realize that recreational fun in the river has made them sick, Brown said, but swimming in polluted waters can cause numerous health problems, from ear infections to gastrointestinal illnesses.

Gatineau lags behind Ottawa in replacing combined sewer system

An added complication is that the Ottawa River separates Ottawa and Gatineau, Quebec, and the two municipalities are replacing their combined sewers at different paces.

Ottawa is in the fifth year of an Ottawa River Action Plan and a recent report to council said the sewer separation program is about 90 per cent complete, with an 80 per cent reduction in sewage spills from combined sewers. The city is also looking for matching funding from the federal and provincial governments for a $195-million plan for a combined sewage storage tunnel.

Progress has not kept up on the Gatineau side of the border, Brown said.

“They still release millions of litres of sewage into the river,” she said. “In Gatineau it happens almost every time it rains. It doesn’t even have to be heavy rain.”

Gatineau spokesperson Alain d’Entremont said the number of overflow events decreased to 992 last year from 1,500 in 2006. There are now 92 points where sewage can enter the river from combined pipes, down from 110 in 2009.

“We are replacing and redoing (pipes) in some of the old neighbourhoods and the new neighbourhoods don’t have combined sewage,” d’Entremont said.

Gatineau is proactive in ensuring it gets matching funds from other levels of government for infrastructure replacement, but they are expensive projects, he said.

For her part, Brown understands that money-squeezed municipalities are forced to chip away slowly at infrastructure replacement, but, especially as the contamination is ongoing, recreational river users need up-to-date information on beach pollution, she said.

SwimGuide app tracks beach pollution levels

Ottawa Riverkeeper, with sister riverkeeper organizations from across Canada and the U.S, have created the free SwimGuide app, which tells people about beach pollution levels — but information about Gatineau’s three city beaches is not always current.

Water at Ottawa’s five beaches is tested daily by the city’s public health department, but, in Quebec, provincial rules require water testing only three to five times during the summer.

Gatineau was already exceeding provincial rules by testing every second week and is now moving to weekly testing for the three beaches, d’Entremont said.

“This summer it seems to be a very sensitive issue and we are going over and above the regulations,” he said.

Unlike Ottawa, the Gatineau beaches are not downstream from a large sewage plant, he said.

Based on the test results, Quebec gives each beach a letter grade. An A grade means there are between zero and 20 coliform units per 100 ml of water. When water deteriorates to a D grade, meaning there are more than 200 coliform units in 100 ml of water, swimming or other recreational activities are not recommended and warning signs are erected at beaches.

In 2012, when Gatineau beaches were tested 12 times, the Parc Moussette beach received a D rating three times. In 2013, with eight test dates through the summer, the same beach was posted as unsafe for swimming once and this year, with seven tests completed so far, there have been no beach closures.

Health Canada estimates that, at the D-grade level, one or two per cent of swimmers will become ill from contamination. That means about 100,000 Canadians a year get sick from swimming in polluted waters.

Brown is hoping that the growing awareness of sewage contamination in the river will mean more public pressure, both for daily testing and for measures to stop the contamination.

“You can’t fix what you haven’t measured. That’s the first step,” she said.

Even if the health concerns don’t push governments to action, there is also a strong economic argument for cleaning up the river and ensuring people are kept informed about pollution levels, she said.

“The Ottawa River is the economic engine of the region. It’s a fantastic recreational river,” she said. Water quality also affects the tourism business in small communities around the Ottawa River, Brown said.

“People spend a lot of money to go places where they can swim in the water. If that is jeopardised, they start to lose business.”

This story was made possible through support from Mountain Equipment Co-op as part of its Homewaters campaign, which is dedicated to preserving Canada’s fresh water from coast to coast.

Image Credit: Ottawa Riverkeeper

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