Health Effects Of Power Station

[alanlktan]

What are the health effects of living next to a power station?

[Canary42]

It depends on the fuel.

And data is much disputed.

[Hypognosis]

Coal Fired?
Google for stuff about particulates, PM10s, low-sulphur coal versus high-sulphur coal

Oil Fired?
Rarely used these days, due to oil prices. UK apparently has one or two just as emergency backup (eg severe winter weather and one of the conventional plants has had to be shutdown for a problem)

Waste-to-Energy incinerator?
Depends how carefully they screen what rubbish is fed to it. It's unlikely you'll find yourself living next door to one, in the UK, at least not without plenty of public consultation, at the local level and independent experts providing information on potential health risks.

Biomass?
Particulates, as per coal and oil. Additionally, burning wood pulp can produce many of the same exotic (not to mention harmful) combustion products as burning tobacco does. However, the chimney stacks will be sending it so far downwind that living next door might be the least affected place to be. You could certainly suffer more by having a garden bonfire three or four times a year or being exposed to barbecue smoke every weekend, say. (Note: barbecue coals/coke burn clean but burning animal meat/fat gives off smoke)

Nuclear?
No harmful effects on a day-to-day basis. Due to the slight risk of incidents, they tend not to be built close to existing homes.

Natural Gas?
Practically zero particulates. Carbon dioxide and water vapour are the most that will come out of the stacks. It's fed by pipeline so there isn't even any delivery train/vehicle pollution.

Wind Turbine?
Repetitive noise could send you round the twist, I guess but I cannot speak from experience about these things.

Solar Array?
No moving parts. No health hazards that I can think of. We don't have these at power station scale in the UK, due to our cloudy climate and unfavourable geographical latitude (shine a torch beam on the wall, then tilt it to a 50-60 deg angle to see the problem - amount of light per unit area = power generated).

[Mosaic]

Lots of work opportunities without a big travel commitment? Bring it on!

[boxtops]

There was a lot of worry a few years back about living under power lines (I believe bees got confused). I lived slap under the M5 power lines in Birmingham - we didn't notice anything amiss.

[KARL]

Hypognosis' list covers much of the technical ground but in fact living under other conditions far away from any power station may statistically entail just as much and even more risk to health than factors arising from power stations. In particular this includes so called lifestyle factors, many of which are not often mentioned.

[jomifl]

Hypo, I have worked on wind turbines, the only place you could hear them was directly under the blade as it swished over your head. As a general and little understood principle, when it is quite enough to hear a wind tubine it isn't rotating. If the wind is strong enough for them to generate noise you cannot hear them because of the wind whistling around your ears, through branches and fences and around buildings. I only speak from my own experience, others may have had different experiences.

[Peter Pedant]

None alantikan, but every tree hugger and gollum has a differing opinion - up to an including killer trees....

[Hypognosis]

Thanks jom,

it hadn't occurred to me that routine wind noise would be enough to blot out any sound from the blades.

In fact, since the question was about living next to power plants, I was answering from the perspective of a person indoors. Low frequencies are more penetrating through walls (eg you always know when a digger, generator, crane truck or similar is running within 100 yards of your house) so I was speculating about subsonic and LF sound being audible.

Anyway, next time I see someone on a debate show trying to scare people into thinking that wind farms will disturb their peace and quiet, I now know that it's just BS.

[jomifl]

Hypo, I used to live next to a power station (about 1 km away). The only problem was acid smuts from the chimney every few years which were compensated for. Coal fired Power stations can be a bit dusty both from the coal and the ash, It is also worth pointing out that coal fired power stations discharge more radio isotopes than a nuclear power station of equivalent size. But that's OK because' thay ain't nooks.' In fact living in the country is noisier when you are surrounded by arable farm land there are about 7 tractor passes per crop year. We used to hear tractors, sometimes intrusively all day about for about 2 weeks per year. Low frequency noise can be a big problem at times.