"Asthma and low life expectancy are highly prevalent in communities around West Virginia’s coal-fired power plants, federal data show.

Most of West Virginia’s coal-fired plants regulated by the Public Service Commission are in or next to areas in the 80th percentile or higher nationally in asthma prevalence, according to a Gazette-Mail analysis of data in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool.

Better known as EJSCREEN, the tool provides socioeconomic and environmental information for geographic areas.

Most of the area directly across the Kanawha River from American Electric Power-controlled John E. Amos Power Plant in Putnam County is in the 90 to 95th percentile for asthma and heart disease, and in the 80th to 90th percentile in low life expectancy, per EJSCREEN."

Mike Tony reports for the Charleston Gazette-Mail August 9, 2023. [2]