Coal news and updates

Residents of Morwell near a coal mine fire in eastern Victoria will suffer no long-term health effects despite reports of headaches, nausea and sore eyes in the wake of the blaze and warnings against the exposure of children, and other at-risk groups, to the haze, The Age reports.

 

According to the newspaper, anger is growing in the Gippsland community where residents live as close as 1km from the Hazelwood coal mine fire which has been burning for 16 days and which has seen a spike in medical clinic visits for a variety of

 

The EPA's air quality index reached 827 in parts of the town yesterday and 400-plus elsewhere, with a rating of 150-plus considered "very poor" air quality, The Age says.

 

But Victoria's chief health officer Rosemary Lester yesterday said current assessments of air quality indicated there was no danger to long-term health "based on what we're seeing from the EPA at the moment", the newspaper reports, with the authority continuing to conduct "weekly" sampling of coal ash from the blaze.

 

But today Ms Lester did suggest young children should be given respite from the smoke.

 

"I would rather move away with my child if I could," Ms Lester told 3AW, according to Fairfax Media. "If I had to stay in Morwell – had nowhere to go – I would make sure I'd take my child to the respite centre [in nearby Traralgon]. If I didn't have anywhere else to go – to make sure the child had some periods away from the smoke."

 

 

Source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/