[Establishment in Mayagüez of a coal-based thermoelectric plant: perspectives for human health]

The proposal to burn coal in Mayagüez fails to address important facts that may affect human health. In the first place, the pattern of winds prevailing in Mayagüez is simply excluded and arbitrarily substituted by a pattern prevailing twenty kilometer north of Mayagüez. The fact that pollutants in compliance with the air standards may, nevertheless, affect human health is entirely disregarded. Also is the episodic accumulations of pollutants by meteorological conditions, such as thermal inversions coupled by low winds. The remarkable effect of exercise amplifying ozone harmful action is ignored, in spite of the athletic activity at the Mayagüez Campus of the UPR. The effect of chronic exposures of nitrogen dioxide on children living in houses with gas stoves is also ignored. These and other omissions raise serious human health concerns about the burning of coal in the setting already existing in Mayagüez.