Respiratory related ER visits decreased 20 percent after Pittsburgh coal-processing plant closure. In the first month of the closure, pediatric asthma visits declined by 41 percent, and continued to fall by 4 percent each month through the end of the study period.
## Pittsburgh Breathes Easier: What Happens When a Coal Plant Closes?
**Hint: It’s good news for kids with asthma.**
Hey, did you hear about what happened in Pittsburgh? It’s pretty cool, actually. I stumbled across this study, and it got me thinking.
Basically, a coal-processing plant closed down. Okay, that’s not exactly breaking news, right? But *what happened* after it closed is the interesting part.
Respiratory-related ER visits dropped. Big time.
* **Overall, ER visits for breathing problems went down by 20%.** That’s a significant chunk.
* **For kids with asthma, it was even more dramatic. Pediatric asthma visits to the ER plummeted 41% in the first month!**
And get this: they kept falling by about 4% each month after that.
Think about that for a second. Imagine you’re a parent with a child who struggles with asthma. That’s a lot of stressful trips to the emergency room, especially during peak allergy seasons or when the air quality dips. Now, imagine those trips becoming less frequent, just because one source of pollution shut down.
It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? How much are these industrial plants impacting our health – and especially the health of our kids?
The study definitely makes a strong case for cleaning up our air. It’s not just some abstract environmental goal. It’s about real people, real families, and real breathing problems getting better.
You can read the study for yourself [here](https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1091970). And if you want to dive into the Reddit discussion, you can check it out [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1m6l6fj/respiratory_related_er_visits_decreased_20/).
It’s easy to feel like these big environmental problems are just too massive to tackle. But this little story out of Pittsburgh? It shows how much of a difference even one change can make. And that’s worth thinking about.