Fossil fuels harm health from ‘cradle to grave’: report

Emissions rise from smokestacks at the PKN Orlen SA oil refinery in Plock, Poland, on Friday, July 17, 2020. Photographer: Bartek Sadowski/Bloomberg

PARIS, France — The extraction, transportation and burning of planet-heating fossil fuels have a huge impact on people’s health that starts before they are born and lasts until they die, a report warned Tuesday.

Pollution from fossil fuels such as oil, coal and gas has been linked to a vast range of health problems, including miscarriages, asthma, cancer, strokes, heart disease and more.

“Fossil fuels are a direct assault on health, harming us at every stage of their lifecycle and every stage of our lives, from the womb to old age,” Shweta Narayan, the author of the new report from the Global Climate and Health Alliance, said in a statement.

The alliance, which includes more than 200 organizations representing 46 million health workers around the world, said the report was the first comprehensive global overview of how fossil fuels affect health across lifetimes.

Living near coal mines or fracking sites has been linked to higher rates of premature births, miscarriages and other problems during pregnancies, according to peer-reviewed research cited in the report.

During childhood, air pollution from fossil fuels is associated with higher rates of asthma and cancers such as leukemia, it added.

Once in old age, people exposed to air pollution have been found to have an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, certain forms of dementia -- and early death.

Poorest often hit hardest

Aside from the health impacts of extracting and burning fossil fuels, transporting them can also pose a threat, such as gas pipe lines leaking into water systems or mass oil spills.

Even once the fossil fuels have been burnt, chemicals such as lead, mercury, and “forever chemicals” PFAS persist in the soil, water and food chain, the report warned.

Extreme weather events made more fierce and common by fossil fuel-driven global warming can compound the impact on health. Hurricanes can knock out health facilities, for example, while smoke from bushfires can cause breathing problems.

The immense toll on health often falls on already disadvantaged and marginalized communities in poorer nations, it added.

Children and the elderly living near coal mines in the central Indian district of Korba “struggle with asthma, bronchitis, and TB; families face birth defects, skin infections, and stomach illnesses from contaminated water,” local health worker Neha Mahant said in the report.

“Coal doesn’t just generate electricity -- it generates suffering.”

‘Ban fossil fuel lobbying’

“The age of fossil fuels has poisoned our air, broken health, and fractured dignity,” former UN climate head Christiana Figueres said in a statement linked to the report, urging a swift transition to renewable energy.

The Global Climate and Health Alliance’s executive director Jeni Miller called for governments to commit to halting new oil, gas and coal projects at November’s COP30 UN climate conference in Brazil.

“Just as governments once curbed tobacco industry influence, they must now ban fossil fuel lobbying and disinformation,” Miller said.

The alliance also urged governments to stop subsidizing fossil fuels, which added up to $7 trillion in 2022, representing more than seven percent of global GDP, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Despite repeated warnings about the devastating impacts of human-caused climate change, last year the world again broke the record for most carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels.

By Daniel Lawler