White Stallion and Children
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Dear Editor:
I have been asked by several people why I repeatedly refer to the health of children in the context of the proposed White Stallion Energy Center, otherwise known as a coal and petroleum-coke fired power plant. A primary reason is complete lack of advocacy on behalf of children in discussions of the proposed plant. Children are the next generation and will bear the effects of environmental deterioration associated with emissions from the proposed plant – 24 hrs per day, 365 days per year!
Discussions of White Stallion have included, to my knowledge, no discussion by local officials of implications of the proposed plant on children. The closest they have come is in glowing discussions projected increases in tax revenues for the school and hospital districts. There is no guarantee how the revenues will be used. Hospitals are designed to treat the sick. Yet, public health officials remind us that it is more cost effective to prevent illness/disease than to treat it!
Children are our future. We all are concerned about their health, education and well being parentally through the school ages and beyond. Anything than can potentially facilitate or perhaps interfere with processes underlying their health, well-being and education should be of concern to all in the county.
Children are also a mirror of conditions in society. Disciplines which focus on the study of children and youth – medicine, public health, human biology, education, and so on – have approached this topic from different perspectives. Evidence is clear in the growth of children. As conditions in society have improved (public health, nutrition, improved living conditions, etc.), heights of children have increased. In the United States, the 6-year-old boy in 1960 was, on average, about 3 inches taller than the 6 year old in 1880 and the 15 year old boy in 1960 was about 5.5 inches taller than the 15 year old in 1880. From the 1960s-1970s to the present, heights of American children have changed only slightly. My own research in Oaxaca, southern Mexico, has shown that children in 2000 were about 2.5 inches taller than those in the 1970s. On the other hand, if conditions in society deteriorate (chronic undernutrition, disease, extreme poverty), heights of children are negatively affected; they are shorter than the previous generation.
We do not yet know the potential influence of environmental deterioration associated with regular emission of pollutants on the growth and development of children. We do know, however, that elevated levels of mercury and lead have a negative influence beginning early in life.
An indicator of general health conditions is infant mortality (IM), deaths in the first year of life. IM in the U.S. ranked 12th in the world in 1960, 23rd in 1990 and 29th in 2004 (www.cdc.gov). IM was 6.9 per 1000 live births (2000-2005) in the U.S, 6.5 in Texas (1995-2005, http://www.dshs.state.tx.us/CHS/VSTAT) and 8.5 in Matagorda County (1997-2005, www.dshs.state.tx.us).
The increased prevalence of asthma among children since the 1980s is related in part to environmental conditions. Asthma is one of the leading causes of chronic illness and disability in children. Almost 9 percent of American children (6.5 million) had asthma in 2005 and estimated days absent from school due to asthma were about 13 million in 2003. Asthma attacks can be triggered by infections, allergens (pollen, dust) and airway irritants (tobacco smoke, industrial emissions) among others. Among Texas youth under 18 years of age, 61 of every 1000 who live within a 30 mile radius of a coal-fired power plant have asthma (www.catf.us/publications/factsheets/Children_at_Risk-Texas.pdf)].
I could list other trends, but these should help to better understand potential implications of the White Stallion coal and pet-coke fired power plant for the children of Matagorda County. Growing up in an environment which includes exposure to air pollutants from the combustion of coal and other fossil fuels has the potential to negatively influence growth and development of children early in life and long term health risk.
A recent discussion of our “addiction to fossil fuels” concluded that: “…environmental and energy policies must also explicitly account for all the impacts of fossil fuel combustion on child health and development and maximize health benefits to this susceptible population” (F.P. Perera, Environmental Health Perspectives, 2008, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2516589/pdf/ehp0116-000987.pdf).
Pollution of the environment and related factors are a consequence of decisions made by adults, not children!
Robert M. Malina, PhD, FAAAS, FACSM
Bay City