Book review: The silent epidemic: coal and the hiddenthreat to health

We will not find “exposure to burning coal” listed as the cause of death on a single death certificate, but tens of thousands of deaths from asthma, lung cancer, heart attacks, strokes, and other illnesses are linked to coal-derived pollution. As politicians and advertising campaigns extol the virtues of “clean coal”, the dirty secret is that coal kills, argues Alan Lockwood in The Silent Epidemic. Lockwood addresses the big issues of global warming, health economics, and their policy implications, leaving Ross Harvey to recommend the book as a reference tool for answering critical questions of how to minimise the social costs of coal.