Coal v.s. Health from Elisa Young

[Mamaka]

I found it interesting when I clicked on Jeff Biggers coal blog that it was followed
at the bottom by a video from Obama asking for citizen input into health care
reform.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/27/obama-asks-for-your-quest_n_221878.html

I don't know how it is where you live, but where I live we are riddled with cancer,
asthma, respiratory, and cardiovascular problems, and children with learning
disabilities that are directly attributable to coal-fired power plant emissions,
mining, and coal ash waste that's being dumped on us.

Does anyone remember Hillary Clinton carrying on about how an ounce of prevention
was worth a pound of cure?

If Obama really cares about health care reform, maybe they should be looking at a
little prevention, and stop building more coal plants, more mountain top removal
mining, more coal ash dumps that are driving up health care costs even worse than
the cigarette industry. Smoking a pack of cigarettes a day raises your cancer death
risk to 100 in 100,000 while coal combustion waste raises the death risk to 900 in
100,000.

Coal ash is a 9 pack-a-day habit. And what about those second-hand smoke stacks?

One of our community members shared with me that her husband was dying in the
same hospital, adjacent room to her friend's husband, from cancer, an hour apart
from each other. She shared that if her husband had lived another month they would
have exceeded their lifetime maximum on health insurance of a million
dollars. Believe me it adds up.

The link above says Obama will directly respond to a few of the comments/questions
most frequently submitted on health care reform. They must be sent by video and
many of us don't have the ability to do that.

If you have concerns about coal's impacts to public health, and have the ability to
respond to his offer in a format he will accept, by all means, do it.

Elisa