Below are excerpts from a letter written by Norma Kreilein, MD, Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, in Jasper, Indiana in response to “Toxic Power: How Power Plants Contaminate Our Air and States,” a recent report by Physicians for Social Responsibility and NRDC.
I am writing as a concerned pediatrician in Southern Indiana. We live in the heart of the power plant belt of the Midwest. For many years I have suspected that our local pollution is greatly responsible for our high rate of inflammatory processes, malignancies, and increasing rates of autism.
For the past several months I have been trying to fight the addition of a biomass plant to our city. The city has long been an industrial base with many wood factories, so there has apparently been a high VOC [volatile organic compounds] load.
Strong opposition was voiced from the time it was publicly mentioned, but the city has pushed the plant through anyway. Much manipulation of emission data has occurred (averaging emissions out over the whole county to make them appear insignificant) but, ironically, one of the more interesting arguments is that the plant, though polluting and within 1/2 mile of a residential neighborhood, should nonetheless be built because the plant will decrease our dependence on coal fired plants.
Biomass combustion is being sold to communities around the country by high pressure, ambiguous, unscrupulous carpetbaggers who promise “jobs” and “green energy” but are vacuuming precious federal funds to produce expensive energy that will never solve our dependence on foreign oil nor make our air any cleaner.
The ultimate problem is that the same monitors and regulators that fail to close down coal plants will do no better with biomass. We will just spend more and think we feel better about it.
