South African officials and citizens are debating whether and how fast the country should embark on a partly donor-funded programme to switch to sun and wind energy from coal. The fossil fuel provides three-quarters of national power and employs 90 000 people in jobs unions are fighting hard to protect.
The report by the South African Medical Research Council and Britains Department for International Development DFID collected nearly three million death certificates from 1997 to 2018 and compared them with air quality data nationwide.
It found higher birth defects and higher death rates among all ages in communities adjacent to the power stations especially from cardiovascular and lung disease.
Some recommendations are that power stations could be decommissioned, co-author Caradee Wright said, presenting the reports findings in Pretoria. We realise thats not going to happen immediately. But coal-fired power does have such a negative impact on human health.