Comment by nandomrumber
3 days ago
You'd think if that were the case, you'd at least know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who's cause of death was coal fired power plant emissions.
You're characterising it wrong. Epidemiologists estimate the days of lost life across a population due to environmental exposures.
If you add all those up they aren't equivalent to number of lives lost.
People who are exposed to radiation typically do not die of acute radiation poisoning. They die of cancers years later. People who are exposed to coal plant pollution also die of cancers and all sorts of pulmonary diseases.
You do probably know someone, and almost definitely know someone who knows someone, whose death was due to chronic coal fired power plant emissions. The fact that that's not what's on the death certificate doesn't mean it's not what happened.