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Doctors often recommend that pregnant women leave.Ībout 1,500 mostly low-income households are within reach of the coal yard dust, said Shweta Narayan of Community Environmental Monitoring, an environmental justice group in India. Women in Mettur, a city of about 50,000 with a variety of heavy industries, are hit particularly hard. Coal dust blows from the yard into neighboring communities. ♦ In Mettur, in southern India, a coal yard where fuel is shipped in by rail and stored for a power plant and factories stands just 100 feet from some homes. ♦ Mercury-laced ash from five mega power plants in the Singrauli district in central India is stored in piles five feet thick, polluting air, water and soil. ♦ In Gujarat, on the west coast, fish catches plummeted after the construction of a massive 4,800-megawatt coal plant destroyed mangrove and creek ecosystems by discharging polluted water in the sensitive ecosystem.

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Residents suffer from asthma, chronic bronchitis and skin problems. ♦ In Jharia, famous for its rich coal resources, 700,000 people are exposed to toxic smoke that seeps from the ground as fires from opencast coalmines burn around the clock. Mettur and other industrial cities throughout India are now mobilizing to document coal’s health impacts on their own residents in an effort to wring environmental protections from local politicians and world leaders.Ĭoal poses health risks in India at all stages – mining, transportation, storage and use: Already burdened by chronic disease, poor nutrition and inadequate health care, they also are highly exposed to air and water pollution, she said.

The poor pay the highest cost of India’s dependence on coal, said Jennifer Wang of the nonprofit group Health Care Without Harm. Accounting for 71 percent of India’s electricity, coal will remain a key player over the next decade, with 455 new plants proposed, according to energy experts. In its bid to industrialize, India relies heavily on energy from coal.

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