Susan M. Burke
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(1) The Public Acceptance of the Risk of Hazards in the Energy Industry
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(2) Major Sources of Air Pollution
The major industrial hazards associated with the use of any of the hydrocarbon fuels (coal, oil, and gas) come in the actual retrieval of the fuel and its refinement and transport to the consumer and, then, in the actual usage of the fuel in the combustion process.
The primary cause of air pollution is from the combustion of the hydrocarbon fuels. It has had very grave health effects on the population in heavily industrialized areas. There has also been well-documented damage done to buildings, statues, fabrics, vegetation and water supplies. Not until recent years has there been strong enough public opinion to warrant the enactment of legislature to control pollution and to take measures to protect the environment. The lack of early controls may be due to public acceptance of the secondary “mals” of an industrialized society. Bronchitis, asthma and emphysema are only a few of the health problems attributed to air pollution and can be added to a much longer list of health problems of industrialized society. (Appendix 1)
Many see the secondary harmful effects of industry as “the price to pay for progress.” The intellectualizing process of risk assessment and acceptance has been evaluated by social psychologists.
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Those who study public reaction to potentially hazardous conditions find reactions favorable if the hazardous conditions have been present over a period of time (longevity factor) and if the hazards are not omnipresent because of constant news media coverage. There have been definite predictable public outcries to well-publicized catastrophic events involving the nuclear powered energy plants (Three Mile Island) and relatively little concern about the long-term accumulative risks of air pollution.
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The emissions causing pollution arise from power-generating plants, residential and commercial buildings, industrial facilities, petroleum refineries, chemical plants and automobiles. These sources are all powered by fossil fuels of nuclear energy. The hydrocarbon or fossil fuels all have the carbon-hydrogen bond. This study concentrates on coal.
Generally speaking, of late, air pollution has caused concern because the increase in population and the resultant decrease of land per capita has had a directly proportionate relationship with the consumption of the fossil fuels. In turn, the increase in consumption has caused a proportionate increase in air pollution. Specific areas have had a high-incident-rate of air pollution related problems. Those adversely effected areas receiving high concentration of pollutants from coal powered plants are in northeastern regions of the United States and southeastern regions of Canada.
A shocking statistic is that the United States has 6% of the world’s population and consumes 1/3 of the world’s energy.
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The problem of increased consumption mandates recognition of the problem in the United States and recognition that Americans lead the world in energy consumption per capita.
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Further, the statistics relating energy consumption, population growth and production growth show that the disproportionate rate of production and energy consumption per capita has caused hazardous levels of air pollution. The pollution increase is not due to the growth of the population alone. Air pollution increases
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t a rate of 4.4% on a mass basis and 4.9% on air quality basis annually.
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(Appendix 4).
Here, these statistics remind us that the U.S. has an inordinantly high per capita consumption of energy compared to all other nations. The questions that should be considered are: Whether this consumption can and should be moderated? Whether the national controls can be applied without impinging on individual rights? Whether other nations should have the opportunity to share in the large energy consumption?
Sharing the world’s energy supply poses questions far more complicated than sharing in the assessment of air pollution and extracting fair compensation for damages. What also should be considered when balancing the world energy supply and demand that the U.S. per capita consumption increase has risen with the production of industry (which requires the energy) so to redistribute energy would mean redistribution of industrialization. Interestingly, Japan’s energy consumption has far exceeded that of the U.S., United Kingdom and the USSR from 1960. This increase is a direct indicator of Japan’s economic and industrialization growth for that same time period. Emphasis of the industrialized energy usage is made from the energy supply and demand scenario. (Table 2 in appendix 4). Of the 150 quads of energy supplied in 1977, over 1/3 or 56.4 was used industrially, 54.2 for residential/commercial use and the remaining went into other usage dominated by 31.5 to transportation. Coal contributed 41.3 quads to the 150 total and 28.9 of the 41.3 were used for energy production. Of the 48.4 quads for oil as a fuel only 3.0 were used for electrical power. So coal is the major fuel used to provide electrical energy therefore the study of the pollutants from the coal production is significant.
Air pollutants are quantifiably measured from air samples and from acidity concentrations in all forms of precipitation.
Particularly effected areas in the northeast include two hundred and twelve (212) lakes in the Adirondak mountains of New York state. These lakes have been rendered unfit for fishlife. Other northeastern states particularly hardhit by acid rain are Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland.
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The midwestern states of Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana are responsible for one-fourth of the total sulfur dioxide pollution in the U.S. Studies reveal that 23.4 million tons of S02 were released in 1974 and 20% more in 1985. Two-thirds of that, almost 20 million tons, came from coal and oil-fired power plants. The other third of the S02 pollution was contributed as follows: 26% from industrial boilers, 5% from commercial and residential buildings and 3% from transportation. Ohio, Illinois and Indiana produced nitrogen oxide emissions accounting for 22.2 million tons in 1974 growing 40% in the 1975-85 period. The emissions of N02 are growing twice as rapidly as S02. Forty per cent of the N02 comes from transportation and 30% from power plants.
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