Reply #6: I remember my grand parents house when it was heated by coal

[HillbillyBob]

soot every where no matter how much cleaning Gramma did.

Actually I live more than 100 miles downwind from 2 coal plants and I can smell the smoke and see the soot on my window sills.
I also have asthma attacks when the wind direction is right and have to close up the house..and I cannot afford to pay electric bill for air conditioning..

We have coal plants in several directions some less than 20 miles away..the wind rarely blows in from that direction though.

Mercury is every bit as bad as stated, plus coal smoke has carbon,arsenic,uranium and several other heavy metals that go out in the smoke and filter out of the air with the rain into soils hundreds of miles away. It settles on crops and soaks in, it settles in rivers which are our drinking water in many cases.
Our water comes from a deep well so its not such and issue here.
We plan a rain catchment system for our garden since we don't want to put to much load on our well.
I have been investigating what we would have to do to filter out the pollutants rather than put on our crops. I painted the roof white with a special sealer and went upo to check the gutters the other day and could see a fine black soot (as compared to the normal dirt that sometimes blows up there which is red from the clay soil here).
Remember Acid Rain how many trees and fish and other things did it kill or affect?