Harry Reid is Right, Coal is Making us Sick

Check out this smokin' hot youtube video posted yesterday in which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) states that "coal makes us sick."

Here's a quick transcript of the Reid video:

Reid: "We talk about cost competitiveness, but one this we fail to talk about is the costs that you don't see on the bottom line. That is, coal makes us sick. Oil makes us sick. And this global warming is ruining our country, it's ruining our world.

You've got to stop using fossil fuels. We have for generations taken it out of the earth, carbon out of the earth and put it in the atmosphere and its making us all sick. Its changing our world."

Reid is right. Coal is making us sick.

Here's a few coal hard facts about the health effects of burning coal from our in-house expert, Dr. Coal:

Mercury Emissions

Mercury in mothers' blood and breast milk can interfere with the development of babies' brains and neurological systems and can lead to learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder, problems with coordination, lowered IQ and even mental retardation.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):

"Very young children are more sensitive to mercury than adults. Mercury in the mother's body passes to the fetus and may accumulate there.

It can also pass to a nursing infant through breast milk. However, the benefits of breast feeding may be greater than the possible adverse effects of mercury in breast milk.

Mercury's harmful effects that may be passed from the mother to the fetus include brain damage, mental retardation, incoordination, blindness, seizures, and inability to speak. Children poisoned by mercury may develop problems of their nervous and digestive systems, and kidney damage."

Respiratory Health

According to the American Lung Association, 24,000 people a year die prematurely because of pollution from coal-fired power plants. And every year 38,000 heart attacks, 12,000 hospital admissions and an additional 550,000 asthma attacks result from power plant pollution.

Asthma is the leading chronic illness among children. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), asthma accounts for 14 million lost days of school missed annually, and asthma is the third-ranking cause of hospitalization among children younger than 15 years of age.

Black Lung

Black lung disease is a common name for any lung disease developing from inhaling coal dust. This name comes from the fact that those with the disease have lungs that look black instead of pink. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that 12,000 coal miners died from black lung disease between 1992 and 2002.