Any environmental paper with the word "death" in it has to be blogged about. Given the increasing use of coal around the world especially in China this has important implications.
"Coal, Smoke, and Death: Bituminous Coal and American Home Heating"
KAREN CLAY, Carnegie Mellon University - H. John Heinz
III School of Public Policy and Management
JOEL A,. TARR, World Bank
Air
pollution was severe in many urban areas of the United States in the first half
of the twentieth century, in part due to the burning of bituminous coal for
heat. We estimate the effects of this bituminous coal consumption on mortality
rates in the U.S. during the mid 20th century. Coal consumption varied
considerably during the 20th century due to coal-labor strikes, wartime oil and
gas restrictions, and the expansion of gas pipelines, among other reasons. To
mitigate the influence of confounding factors, we use a triple-differences
identification strategy that relies on variation in coal consumption at the
state-year-season level. It exploits the fact that coal consumption for heating
was highest in the winter and uses within-state changes in mortality in
non-winter months as an additional control group. Our estimates suggest that
reductions in the use of bituminous coal for heating between 1945 and 1960
decreased winter all-age mortality by 1.25 percent and winter infant mortality
by 3.27 percent, saving 1,923 all age lives per winter month and 310 infant
lives per winter month. Our estimates are likely to be a lower bound, since
they primarily capture short-run relationships between coal and mortality.
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