While the market price for coal was $32 per ton in 1998, when environmental and health disruptions are factored into the equation, coal is not as cheap as it may seem.

Mining/Extraction
Air

- Coal dust causes black lung and other respiratory diseases in miners.
- Mining can result in explosions and fires.
- Machinery causes dangerous fumes and disruptive noise.

- Mining causes soil degradation, erosion and subsidence.
- Farms and forests are destroyed and communities displaced by strip mining and mountain top removal.

-Watersheds are degraded and streams filled in by mountain top removal and strip mining.
-Acid mine drainage from tailings as well as wastewater discharge pollute rivers and drinking water sources

-Mining releases large quantities of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
-Greenhouse gasses released by coal mining plays a significant role in destabilizing climate, contributing to sea-level rise, weather extremes, disease outbreaks, shifts in agriculture and water supply, extensive ecosystem damage, loss of species, and other serious disruptions.

- Coal may be shipped thousands of miles to power plants in open train cars and barges, producing “fugitive dust” that is blown into the air.

Land

- A considerable amount of land has been developed for the rails and roads that transport coal.

- The engines and machines used to transport coal release CO2, the most prevalent greenhouse gas.
- Greenhouse gasses released by these machines destabilize climate, contribute to sea-level rise, weather extremes, disease outbreaks, shifts in agriculture and water supply, extensive ecosystem damage, loss of species, and other serious disruptions.
 

- Smokestack scrubbers used to filter sulfur out of coal emissions produce large amounts of sludge and other wastes.

- Coal washing, used to strip sulfur from coal before it is burned, requires large quantities of water.

-Technologies used to trap sulfur and nitrogen emissions require more energy, which releases more CO2.
- Greenhouse gasses released by these technologies destabilize climate, contribute to sea-level rise, weather extremes, disease outbreaks, shifts in agriculture and water supply, extensive ecosystem damage, loss of species, and other serious disruptions.
 

- Particulates, sulfur dioxide, ground level ozone from nitrogen oxides, and toxic metals released by  the burning of coal contribute to cancer risks, impair infant development, cause respiratory illness, and increase rates of morbidity and mortality.

- Acid deposition from sulfuric and nitric acid leaches nutrients from soils and damages forests, crops and buildings.
- Ozone impairs plant growth. Power plants and massive “slag heaps” – piles of ashes from coal burning – take up land and cause degradation.
 

- Acid deposition and heavy metals poison rivers and lakes.
- Nitrogen oxides cause eutrophication, where plant growth cuts off oxygen supplies to other species.
= Cooling towers demand and heat up large amounts of water.
 

- Combustion of coal is the single largest source of CO2 emissions.
- Greenhouse released by coal combustion play a significant role in destabilizing climate, contributing to sea-level rise, weather extremes, disease outbreaks, shifts in agriculture and water supply, extensive ecosystem damage, loss of species, and other serious disruptions.