Why Geographic Clusters Are Impossible to Prove | Hacker News Reader

Why Geographic Clusters Are Impossible to Prove

newsweek.com

24 pointsChuckMcM9 comments

I read this and was struck by this paragraph:

According to an inventory Duke Energy filed with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for 2010, the [Coal power] plant released more than 800,000 pounds of toxic pollutants into the air, as well as 32,000 pounds of arsenic, 7,333 pounds of chromium, 4,000 pounds of cobalt and other toxic heavy metals into the pond, all of which residents worry is seeping into the groundwater. This is especially significant in Belews Creek, where many locals rely on wells for their drinking water.

And think, this is the preferable to nuclear power? Of course it isn't, but people don't often get thrown in their face just how damaging coal fired plants are to their environment when properly operated!

Nuclear accidents are far more likely to get news attention though. No one cares about coal pollution.

But nuclear had far scarier edge case failures, and the industry has discredited itself by constantly claiming these are "impossible" as they continue to happen.

I don't disagree that coal is worse. Coal is one long protracted industrial accident.

Coal is one of the nastiest, polluting, disgusting ways to produce electricity. Often, it's even the case that burning coal leaves a radioactive slag (because of materials that came with the coal while mining) so that a coal powerplant has radioactive waste too!

>A 2007 study by University of Michigan researchers seemed to back Gesell up, showing those living within 2 miles of the Field Laboratory were 60 percent more likely to be stricken with cancers of the thyroid, upper digestive tract, bladder, blood and lymph tissue than those who lived more than 5 miles away.

What's the likelihood that a randomly selected geographic point in the U.S. will yield that same contrast of 60%?

The difficulty of analyzing clusters suggests a strategy for polluters. You could estimate, for any given area, how much increased cancer risk would be hard to distinguish from confounding factors. Areas with distinctive socioeconomic or racial groups, or pre-existing polluters, or elevated background radiation have obvious confounds so it'll be harder in the future to show a causal link from any particular polluter's operations. Also, areas with transient populations or with a cultural aversion to health care make it difficult to prove that pollution causes problems.

I think it's already true that US polluters tend to operate in such regions. Do people know if the above theory is known and applied, or if they operate in such regions just because land and labor is cheap?

Could be both, too.

I'd also be interested in seeing the correlation between the political power that poor and/or non-white communities have in the area, and the likelihood that they get stuck with such things in their neighborhoods. Anecdotally I've heard stories from the days of widespread highway construction, when both rich, white and poor, black neighborhoods were supposed to get highways built right through their neighborhoods, but only the former managed to lobby successfully against them.

Naively, the poorest people are the least able to uproot and move somewhere else, so if you put a NIMBY like a coal power plant near them, everyone who can afford to leave will move away, leaving only the poorest.

Furthermore, the presence of the power plant will drive property values down, placing it higher on the afforability list for people that are poor and in the market for property.

Give some time for these two factors to play out, and you'll only have poor people living next to a power plant even if it didn't always start off that way.

Which is still sort of outrageous in a quite empty place like the US. The people consuming the energy should be paying for a nice setback from the power plant.

I guess a complicating factor is that access to water makes it easier to run a power plant and is also something desirable for residential areas. I'm sitting about 2 miles from a now shuttered coal plant. So is about 1/3 of the population of the county, because the towns developed by the water, before electrification.

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