A recent study looked at the complete impact of fossil fuels on health. The study looked at fossil fuels from production (oil and gas wells, coal mines) to processing to end use. It found that Georgia has the 8th highest numbers of deaths from fossil fuels of all the states in the country. Almost all of our deaths are from using fossil fuels, we have no oil or gas wells and no crude oil refineries. The recent PSC agreement to let Georgia Power add more gas power plants and keep coal plants open longer will make us have even more deaths and poor health.
The study also looked at other kinds of health problems: preterm births, asthma, and cancer. We are about 8th for preterm births caused by fossil fuels, about 6th for childhood asthma incidence (when children develop asthma), and about 7th for cancer. (These are all in Figure 3 from the article, which is the main image for this blog.) Again, almost all our health problems come from burning fossil fuels, and again this shows why building more natural gas plants will be really detrimental to our health.
To put this in perspective, fossil fuels in the whole U.S. account for “2% of all non-accidental death in adults, 3% of all COPD deaths, 3% of preterm births, 10% of childhood asthma, and 4% of all lung and blood cancers.”
Not only do fossil fuels cause too many excess deaths, premature births, asthma, and cancer, but the health burdens are unevenly spread. Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans have both more exposure and worse health impacts from fossil fuels, because we have built more polluting facilities in or near their communities.
This map shows the exposures on a map. You can see that the vast majority of our exposure in Georgia is end use from our own burning of fossil fuel. We get a little bit of drift from PM2.5, ozone, and benzene, but the right hand column shows that most of it is what we are doing to ourselves by burning fossil fuels.
What can we do about this?
Share this information with people who make policy about what kinds of power sources we need – elected leaders including federal and state senators and representatives, the governor, the Public Service Commission, and county and school board officials who decide what power sources their buildings and vehicle fleets will use. Every one of them needs to know that you care about this and that they need to listen to their constituents.
12/12-2025 AKMB
