We estimate that between roughly 6000 and 10,700 annual deaths from heart ailments, respiratory disease and lung cancer can be attributed to the 88 coal fired power plants and companies receiving public international financing.This range of estimated mortality reflects different assumptions regarding use of air pollution control technologies in plants for which this information was not obtainable. Air pollution from coal-fired power plants is also associated with other health outcomes, including infant deaths, asthma and other lung diseases.
Estimates of the number of people experiencing these additional health outcomes were not made in this study, as the necessary data from the countries where the power plants are located were not available. This suggests that the deaths estimated here represent only a portion of a larger overall health burden related to air pollution from these power plants.
While most new power plants in both developed and less-developed countries have some modern pollution controls, such as electrostatic precipitators (ESPs), use of flue-gas desulfurization (FGD) is relatively rare in the less-developed countries. When utilized on plants that otherwise do not remove large amounts of sulfur from their emissions (e.g., through coal fluidized bed techniques), FGD can reduce sulfur dioxide emissions by 90%, resulting in substantial human health risk reductions
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