Environmentalists see increasing fossil fuel use to power
electric plants as a health risk. That’s because they don’t grasp a basic
connection: Electric demand is created by the use of electric technologies. Obvious, yet
always overlooked.
Legislators must recognize the positive health impacts of using electric technologies
before making policy decisions. They need to understand that—surprise!—price is
a factor. You cannot get the benefits of electric technologies if the market cannot afford
the electrons.
The electric technologies that drive the health/lifespan trend in developing nations
are easy to recognize—largely refrigeration, irrigation, sanitation, and other core
benefits of civilization. But those are the basics. The important question for
post-industrial societies is whether or not there are significant health benefits from
continued electrification—which is to say, finding new uses for electricity. After
all, we already use 100 times more kilowatt-hours per capita than developing nations. The
answer to this question is critical to current EPA health policy deliberations and
(inconveniently for anticoal interests) intersects with the emerging competitive (a.k.a.
"deregulated") electric market in the United States.
Many sources, including the EPA, agree coal will play a leading role in providing
future low-cost electricity. We can answer the health question by examining the character
of emerging electric technologies. Mills•McCarthy & Associates surveyed its
database of more than 500 new and emerging electric technologies (ETs) and found they are
dominated by examples that will lead to a healthier environment.
Safety On the Job
For instance, electric technologies can render harmless or even completely eliminate
workplace hazards:
• Paint stripper. The highly toxic and carcinogenic chemical ethylene
chloride is the most common paint stripper. But electricity makes chemical-free paint
stripping possible through powerful electric pumps to create a water "jet" that
completely removes the paint.
• Industrial cleaners. Acid-free metal cleaning can be accomplished with a
combination of electrolysis and ultrasound. Low-temperature plasma torches can replace
solvents in industrial cleaning.
• Termite control. Liquid nitrogen (produced with chemical pumps and
chillers) can be used in place of chemical toxins to destroy termites.
• Air-conditioning and pool chemicals. Fabricating, transporting, storing,
and using chlorine exposes workers to health hazards. But electrically generated ozone can
replace chlorine in commercial building cooling systems, and even in swimming pool water
(especially for Olympic pools and at zoos). Ozone has the same effect as chlorine in
destroying organic and bacterial hazards.
• Medical waste. Hospitals, medical institutions, and research laboratories
all produce potentially hazardous medical waste. Microwave disinfection can reduce the
volume of medical waste by more than 80 percent and render the remainder harmless.
• Fire risk. Infrared dryers can be used in textile production, eliminating
the use of thermal dryers and the associated workplace risk of fire as well as reduction
in indoor emissions.
As for the air we breathe, electric technologies also can eliminate toxic manufacturing
emissions such as:
• Organic hazards. A cold (electric) plasma process can cost-effectively
destroy the organic hazards in a factory’s exhaust.
• Chemical emissions. Using supercritical carbon dioxide gas can eliminate
the need for chemical solvents and the resulting emissions during coating and painting
processes.
• Combustion emissions. Using ETs reduces harmful emissions to the urban
air shed. Any electric technology that replaces a combustion-based technology (electric
buses, golf carts, water heaters, cooling systems, etc.) results in zero emissions of
critical smog precursors in urban breathing zones.
Conspicuous Consumption
Aside from manufacturing and workplace hazards, ETs can reduce or eliminate toxins we
encounter daily in indoor air, drinking water, and food.
• "Sick" buildings. Hospitals, nursing homes, and office
buildings are all plagued by the presence of various chemical and biological hazards in
the air. Ultraviolet light systems can greatly reduce—and in some cases completely
eliminate—indoor air’s biological hazards.
• Meat Safety. In food processing plants, meat can be exposed to very
high-frequency pulsed electric fields that destroy harmful organisms without creating a
significant increase in temperature, thus achieving the effect of pasteurization, commonly
used in liquids such as milk and juice.
• Food Preservatives. Liquid carbon dioxide may revolutionize the food
industry by doubling the shelf life of foods and eliminating the need for costly and
controversial preservatives. A highly pressurized, liquid form of carbon dioxide
(requiring lots of electricity) is finding its way into ice cream, cottage cheese, and
other dairy products, and it can be injected into the packaging of meat and poultry. Not
only is it far more effective than chemical food preservatives, it’s inexpensive,
harmless to the consumer and environmentally benign.
A nation’s water supply also benefits from expanding electric technological
capability. ETs can remove or destroy hazards in waste streams or remediate waste
problems. In fact, they permit 100 percent recycling of waste water, thus eliminating
hazard-laden discharge.
• Toxic metals. Metals processors, photo labs, and research facilities all
contribute a wastewater stream that contains small concentrations of highly toxic metals.
Cold-vaporization electric vacuum pumps and heaters permit the separation and reuse of
both the metals and the water (which becomes drinking-quality).
Conserving Resources
ETs can achieve a dramatic reduction in the volume of wasted raw materials in
manufacturing (which means reduced health hazards associated with the mining, conversion,
and transport of raw and waste materials).
• Lasers. Laser cutting and laser welding technologies, combined with
microprocessor controls, lead to dramatic improvements in the efficiency of manufacturing
and substantial reductions in wasted materials.
• Water jets. Ultra high-pressure water-jet cutting is used to manufacture
products as diverse as diapers, carpets, crackers, and chicken. The highly precise cutting
technology greatly reduces wasted material.
• Chemical processes. Microwave-based chemistry promises to reduce energy
use and greatly increase the speed and yields of chemical processes, thus reducing waste
cost and pollution.
• Spare Tires. The nation’s piles of 850 million scrap tires present
dramatic health hazards whenever they burn. Such fires produce an enormous quantity of
dangerous fumes and are almost impossible to extinguish. At least two emerging electric
technologies, one based on microwaves, the other on cryogenics, can break down and recycle
a tire’s basic constituents into oil and metal.
Aside from the pervasive, incremental but important improvements in a healthy
environment, the aggregate effect of increased use of hundreds of new and emerging
electric technologies will be twofold: it increases use for electricity while
simultaneously increasing demand for cheap power as society becomes more dependent on
kilowatt-hours. Curtailing coal use will serve to increase electric costs and erode and
perhaps even eliminate the many important health benefits we now enjoy.
