Burning
coal releases mercury naturally contained in the fuel.
Not exact matches
According to Adriana Gonzales of the Sierra Club, an uncovered five - story pile of
coal ash situated next to a low - income and minority community in the town of Guayama threatens to toxify the entire area thanks to its content of heavy metals like arsenic,
mercury, and chromium that will be
released when the rain liquefies the ash.
«Seeing all these numbers together for the first time, the unescapable takeaway is that human impact on the vanadium cycle is greater than our well - publicized impacts on the movement of lead through the atmosphere or the
release of
mercury from
coal,» he said.
Most eventually finds its way into the environment, along with
mercury released from burning
coal, smelting metal, making cement and incinerating waste.
But whenever metal is smelted or
coal is burned, some
mercury is
released.
«Small - scale gold mining contributes to one third of the
mercury released into the environment today,» says physicist Stephan Robinson of Green Cross Switzerland — Blacksmith's partner in the research and ranking — or nearly as much as
coal burning by power plants.
Although
mercury, a neurotoxin, occurs naturally in the environment, it is also
released into the atmosphere when humans burn
coal and other fossil fuels.
Coal combustion
releases chromium and arsenic (carcinogens), lead and
mercury (neurotoxins), and dioxins and furans (endocrine disruptors).
Even though large amounts are
released into the air by human activities such as
coal burning, smelting, mining and waste incineration,
mercury also occurs naturally in the environment, where it undergoes a complex chemical cycle.
The rest is
released by human activities, with
coal - fired power plants contributing the largest source of
mercury to the atmosphere.
The classic example is
mercury toxicity
release from
coal power plants.
And as we burn more and more fossil fuels and
coal, that
releases mercury into the air, which is deposed into the ocean.
Mercury released by
coal - fired power plants is the principal reason why 44 of the 50 states in the United States have issued
mercury intake advisories limiting the consumption of fish from freshwater streams and lakes.
Coal - fired power plants
release nearly 400,000 tons of hazardous air pollutants every year, including more than 40 percent of all man - made
mercury emissions in the U.S..
Alex Epstein claimed, in a Forbes article, that health risks related to the
release of
mercury by
coal fired power plants were a «myth» while the «truth» is that «Shutting down
coal power will make electricity more expensive and threaten human health, while the impact on
mercury exposure would be so small that it will have no observable effect.»
Fossil fuel burning also
releases hazardous and toxic air pollutants; for example,
coal - fired electricity generation accounts for over half of
mercury emissions in the United States.
Direct anthropogenic sources such as
coal combustion, however, still
release large amounts of inorganic
mercury into the atmosphere, either as gaseous elemental
mercury (GEM; Hg °) or as divalent gaseous
mercury species (Hg2 +)(3).
Coal and oil - burning power plants, which
release tons of
mercury pollution each year [PDF] in the U.S., have avoided any federal
mercury protections, despite the Clean Air Act 1990 amendments.
Coal mining and power production
release toxic heavy metals like
mercury, respiratory irritants like sulfur dioxide and particulates, and large volumes of heat - trapping gases like carbon dioxide and methane.