Of the many health impacts linked to fossil fuels perhaps the most gruesome is chimney sweep testicle.
Following the Great Fire of London in 1666, chimneys were required by law to be regularly cleaned to avoid another catastrophic conflagration. Coal was the common fuel in the 1700s and boys as young as four years old were forced to climb inside narrow chimneys to scrape away the accumulated residue containing a variety of carcinogenic chemicals. Decades later, large and painful testicle tumours would appear.
“It is a disease…makes it first attack on the inferior part of the scrotum where it produces a superficial, painful ragged ill-looking sore with hard rising edges,” noted Dr. Percivall Pott in 1775. Pott discovered the link between the condition and toxic coal chemicals. “In no great length of time it pervades the skin … and the membranes of the scrotum, and seizes the testicle, which it enlarges, hardens and renders truly and thoroughly distempered.”
So painful was the condition that the afflicted would sometimes resort to cutting off sensitive parts of their own bodies to try to seek relief. Chimney sweep carcinoma was the first-ever identified occupational cancer, and the first cancer linked to a fossil fuel.
Fast forward 250 years and the staggering health consequences of burning fossil fuels continues to impact millions. A recent study linked oil and gas particulate pollution with 90,000 premature deaths in the U.S. each year and 10,000 pre-term births. Ninety percent of all new cases of childhood asthma were tied to nitrogen dioxide pollution from the petroleum industry, impacting over 200,000 kids each year.
Outdoor air pollution worldwide kills 3 million people each year according to the Organization of Economic Development (OECD) and costs the global economy $3.5 trillion. About half of those costs are linked to pollution from fossil fuel road transport within OECD countries.
Other studies in the European Union and U.S. have estimated the economic costs related to air pollution at between four and five percent of GDP. In Canada that would be the equivalent of paying for our vastly scaled up military budget by 2035 now requiring deep cuts to other areas of public spending.
What other industrial sector is allowed to inflict such enormous externalized costs on society without compensation? Even the tobacco industry was eventually held accountable for the billions spent treating ailments related to their dangerous product. Why is the oil and gas industry somehow exempt from the well-documented burden that burning fossil fuels places on the health care system?
Birds, Whales and RFK Jr.
In a textbook example of Freudian projection, oil and gas proponents instead point to the supposed health impacts of wind turbines such as low frequency noise, debunked by research found here, here and here. After extensive study, the only statistically significant impact of wind turbines on nearby residents has been annoyance, a condition also associated with car alarms, leaf blowers or barking dogs.
The alleged carnage by wind turbines on birds is another favourite pro-oil talking point dwarfed by the number of birds killed by powerlines (18 times more), flying into buildings (1,400 times more) or dispatched by house cats (6,000 times more). Fossil fuel energy generation in fact kills almost 20 times more birds per unit of energy due to habitat destruction, air pollution and climate change.
But what about the whales? In a bizarre cabinet meeting last month, U.S. health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed that wind turbines somehow killed 160 whales off the U.S. east coast in the last two years. Gushing praise on the president for abruptly halting an almost complete $4 billion offshore wind project, RFK Jr. assured Trump, “You are going to save the whales of the East Coast.”
As difficult as it may be to believe, it appears that RFK Jr. is not entirely truthful or accurate in his statements regarding on wind turbines and whales. Or vaccines and autism. Or the menace of chemtrails. The involvement of the Department of Health and Human Services with wind turbines (or whales) apparently comes directly from the White House, which has roped in several other disparate departments in an effort to kneecap offshore wind developments already approved or near completion.
Regulation Rollbacks
Meanwhile, legislation that protected Americans for decades from fossil fuel pollution is being rolled back in a regulatory shock and awe campaign. Trump’s newly appointed administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency announced 31 separate actions last March to gut restrictions on air and water pollution in what the EPA boasted was “the greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in the history of the United States.”
Environmental groups were less enthused. “EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin today announced plans for the greatest increase in pollution in decades,” warned Amanda Leland, Executive Director of Environmental Defense Fund. “The result will be more toxic chemicals, more cancers, more asthma attacks, and more dangers for pregnant women and their children.”
The fossil fuel industry enjoys vast subsidies but perhaps the largest are the enormous uncompensated costs on human health still totaling trillions of dollars per year. Chimney sweep testicle cancer is thankfully a thing of the past due to belated regulation and a move to cleaner fuels.
Finally ending our addiction to fossil fuels will further benefit the climate and our health. Do we have the balls to do it?
