Electricity and Public Health:

A Vital Link

I haven't been blogging for the past month or so, in large part because I was on an extended trip.  The last stop on the trip was to attend a wedding in Half Moon Bay, California in early November.   I had been following the news about the wildfires in California and the deliberate power outages intended to prevent a power line from sparking more fires.  However, I had never thought to check what was happening where I was going, so I was startled when the groom spoke at the reception after the ceremony and mentioned that the power in Half Moon Bay had been cut off by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) until just a couple of days before the wedding!

The bridal couple--and the entire wedding party--was fortunate that the power came back on in time for the festivities, but as the news made clear, the decision whether or not to shut down carried potential negative consequences either way.  I am not questioning the PG&E's decision to cut off power in some areas.  As the 2018 wildfires made clear, fires sparked by downed power lines can be deadly, and the decision to cut power this year may have saved lives and millions of dollars of property. 

But the decision to cut off power was not without some negative consequences of its own.  Other emergencies can occur (including wildfires started by lightning or human activities), and blackouts can make it harder to communicate in such circumstances--either to get information on the path of the fire or evacuation recommendations and routes, or to call for help.  And a loss of power can be deadly to people with health problems.  In addition, there are smaller problems, such as spoilage of food or medications during multi-day outages, that also carry potential health problems. 

The importance of electricity to the well-being of people today was further emphasized in another news item I read the same week on the long-term impacts of the Fukushima accident in Japan.  This article reports on the tentative results from a study that suggests that more people died in the aftermath of the accident, from causes not directly related to the accident or tsunami, than died in the accident itself.  (This is in addition to deaths attributed to the evacuation.)  I should note that this study has not yet been peer reviewed, so I can't attest to the exact numbers.  However, the points addressed correspond well with other articles I've read, so I think it is appropriate to explore the general issues. 

In this case, the concern is not just whether or not electric power is available, it is also how the electric power is being produced, and the cost of that power.  So for the Fukushima accident, the response was the shutdown of nuclear power plants and the replacement of that power by fossil fuel plants.  This created two health risks--first, there was an increase in air pollution, which has a detrimental effect, particularly on the elderly and people with certain illnesses.  Second, these substitute sources of electricity also cost a lot more, and apparently, this resulted in some people not being able to afford the power they needed and dying from exposure to cold.

Simply put, electricity is central to today's way of life.  It is how many homes are heated; it is how ventilators, dialysis machines, and other lifesaving devices operate; and it is central to how we get news that may be critical to our safety, such as evacuation instructions, and how we let people know where we are.  More and more, such factors need to be taken into account when decisions are made to turn off electric power plants.  Of course, in the longer term, changes may be needed in our infrastructure as well.  But burying power lines and making other such changes is a very expensive and long-term proposition.  Until then, we need to give more thought to the consequences of turning off electric power plants and plan for ways to protect vulnerable population groups and provide backups for critical communications.   

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