Grist: “Installing heat pumps in factories could save $1.5 trillion and 77,000 lives.” Full of good news this morning. “A new report finds that replacing conventional boilers with heat pumps could also avoid 33 million asthma attacks by 2050, thanks to improved air quality.” Pivoting from a focus on wonderfully efficient residential heat pumps, ‘attention is turning toward industries that burn fossil fuels in boilers to process food, textiles, and a bevy of other goods.’ Here’s the rub: “In addition to producing almost a quarter of the nation’s directly emitted greenhouse gases, the manufacturing sector loads the atmosphere with toxicants, including nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, and PM 2.5—particulate matter smaller than 2.5 millionths of a meter—which all cause extensive and severe health problems.” A new report from the American Lung Association [ALA] finds…replacing 33,500 conventional, combustion-based boilers nationwide with this electric alternative could avoid 77,200 premature deaths, 33 million asthma attacks, and more than 200,000 new asthma cases by 2050, not to mention ‘save $1.1 trillion in health costs in that period, and prevent $351 billion in climate damages.’ As a physician, I appreciate that “by shifting to zero-emissions technologies that aren’t burning fuel—but they’re producing the same heat, steam, and boiling water that’s needed to fulfill these manufacturing needs—we can see these massive public health benefits.” Just that 1 pollutant, PM 2.5 particulates, can bypass our body’s defenses + ‘go deep’ into our lungs + actually pass into our bloodstream. Just last wk, “scientists estimated that the massive blazes in Los Angeles in January may have killed 15 times as many people as the official tally, considering the deaths that may have been due to smoke inhalation but weren’t recognized as such.” Thus, heat pumps can save energy, the air, and lives.
