Air pollution particles from coal-fired power stations are more harmful to human health than many experts realized, and are more than twice as likely to contribute to premature deaths as air pollution particles from other sources, new research shows.
In the study, published in the journal Science, colleagues and I mapped how emissions from U.S. coal-fired power plants traveled through the atmosphere, then linked the emissions from each power plant to the death data of Americans over 65 on Medicare.
Our results suggest that air pollutants released from coal-fired power plants were linked to nearly half a million premature ...