Loy Yang Power station in Victoria's Latrobe Valley

Final Report Released:

UN investigates toxic coal pollution

20 September 2024

The UN Special Rapporteur has released his final report on toxic coal pollution: Strong government action is needed so every Australian can lead a toxic free life

For decades, communities have urged action, and now the United Nations supports their call: The Australian government must enshrine the right to a healthy environment and urgently address air pollution, water contamination, and mercury to ensure a toxic-free life for all Australians.

The UN Special Rapporteur highlighted the long-standing environmental and health burdens coal-fired power plants and mining have placed on local communities, urging the Australian Government to act on the management of coal fired power stations and rehabilitation of mines.

The recommendations called for the Australian government to:

  1. Guarantee every Australian’s right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment by enshrining the human right to a healthy environment in law.
  2. Ensure communities are protected from the impacts of air pollution by:
    • Aligning air quality standards with World Health Organisation guidelines.
    • Requiring comprehensive pollution controls on operators
    • Requiring real time, publicly accessible monitoring of pollution.
    • Phasing out fossil fuels and implementing a just transition in support of workers and their communities.
    • Stopping all new fossil fuel developments.
  3. Protect communities from the harmful effects of mercury by implementing stronger control systems in accordance with the Minamata Convention.
  4. Ensure rehabilitation bonds are adequate and safeguard water sources from overconsumption and pollution caused by mining activities

What does this mean for Australia?

Australia must become a leader on a range of toxics issues, including addressing the toxic threats posed by coal-fired power stations and mining. It must implement the UN Special Rapporteur’s recommendations to ensure communities affected by coal-fired power stations and coal mining are protected from hazardous pollution.

The most important and immediate action Australia must take to address human rights and toxics is to introduce a human right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment.

Introducing this right could guide laws and policies that secure respect for the rights of First Nations Peoples, inform public participation in environmental decision-making and to make the right to live in a toxic-free environment a reality for all Australians.

Find out more

The Special Rapporteur is an independent expert appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council. There are many different Special Rapporteurs, who each specialise in a particular human rights issue.

As an expert in international law and the law on human rights and the environment. Dr. Marcos A. Orellana was appointed Special Rapporteur on Toxics and Human Rights in August 2020.

In this role he investigates and provides detailed, up-to-date information on how the management and disposal of toxic substances and wastes impacts on people’s human rights.

The Special Rapporteur on Toxics and Human Rights made a "country visit" to Australia during August-September 2023.

The Special Rapporteur visited communities and governments across Australia to inquire about a wide range of issues related to toxics and human rights and the implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes.

Ahead of the visit, the Special Rapporteur called for submissions from members of the public that focussed on a number of issues including:

  • exposure to hazardous substances
  • waste management
  • energy transition strategy, including the implications for the generation of hazardous substances and waste (for example, coal ash)
  • water bodies pollution
  • access to information.

You can read Environmental Justice Australia’s submission.

Following the Special Rapporteur’s visit, he makes an interim and final report to the UN Human Rights Council, summarising the findings of his visit and making recommendations.

Communities have been calling for better regulation of toxic waste from burning coal for years. They want to see cleaner air and waterways, and to know their communities are free from the health impacts of toxic pollution.

The NSW Government and its agencies have been slow to act on the pollution problems associated with coal fired power stations, despite recognising they cause serious health impacts for communities and environmental harm.

The Special Rapporteur’s visit gave communities the chance to elevate their concerns with an international body and to push for the UN to make recommendations for improvements to the way that toxics are managed and disposed.

Air pollution from burning coal has a significant impact on human health – including higher rates of childhood asthma, low birth weight in newborn babies, heart and lung disease, and some cancers.

Over two million Australians are exposed to toxic pollutants from coal-fired power stations and it is estimated that the health impacts of coal fired power stations cost taxpayers an estimated $2.4 billion every year.

Dirty air is an invisible killer endangering our communities. This impacts kids in the playground, people shopping on the street and elderly people in the park.

Too often, the toxic toll of air pollution falls on communities that don’t have the resources to take on giant mining companies or private power station operators.

And it’s not just in the air people breathe. In addition to the health impacts caused by toxic air pollution from coal, there are also health impacts associated with storing coal-ash (a by-product from burning coal) in large dumps near waterways and communities. Coal ash stored in unlined ash dumps contaminates waterways with toxic substances like mercury, selenium, arsenic and cadmium.

This has prompted investigations from the NSW Environment Protection Authority into the impacts of coal ash dumps on Lake Macquarie. It also led a NSW Parliamentary Inquiry to recommend that NSW Health undertake an epidemiological assessment of the health of residents near coal ash dams to establish the health impacts of coal ash – a recommendation that has to date, been ignored.

Prior to the release of his final report, the Special Rapporteur released an interim report outlining his concerns about the regulation of toxic pollution in Australia and the impacts this has on the human rights of communities, including on communities in the Latrobe Valley and Lake Macquarie and Central Coast regions.

The report found that local communities have been forced to bear the unfair burden of environmental and health impacts caused by coal-fired power stations and coal mining. They continue to pay the price of coal company apathy and the lack of government action with premature deaths, terminal illnesses, asthma and other serious health problems. This is in part because:

  • Air quality standards in Australia are not robust enough to properly protect health;
  • Some big polluters, like Vales Point Power Station, have been granted repeated exemptions from clean air laws altogether;
  • Coal-fired power stations lack adequate pollution controls; and
  • Coal ash dams pose threats to the environment and community health, but despite this, taxpayers and the government – not mining operators – risk being left to cover the cost of rehabilitation.

Looking back on the Special Rapporteur's visit to Australia

In August 2023, the UN Special Rapporteur visited Australia to investigate the harms of toxic coal pollution on people and the planet.

Chronic illnesses and contaminated land and waterways: these are the serious health and environmental impacts of coal pollution.

For years, the Central Coast and Latrobe Valley communities have been speaking out – and the United Nations took note.

Special Rapporteur meets with communities in NSW and Victoria

On a sunny afternoon in late August 2023, more than 100 people packed into the Chain Valley Bay Community Hall – just a few hundred metres from the towering Vales Point Power Station smokestacks – to meet with the UN Special Rapporteur.

Over two hours, the UN investigator heard from dedicated community advocacy groups Future Sooner and Hunter Community Environment Centre, lawyers from Environmental Justice Australia, and lawyers from the Environment Defenders Office and their clients, about the serious health and environmental impacts of coal fired power stations and coal mining.

When one speaker asked the room: how many of you experience, or know someone who experiences, serious respiratory problems? The hands of three-quarters of the room shot up.

Community members shared their concerns that toxic air and water pollution from coal fired power stations like Vales Point and Eraring contributes to a range of illnesses across the Lake Macquarie and Central Coast community.

They spoke about their life-altering experiences with serious health conditions like cancer. 

Eraring Power Station

Eraring is Australia’s largest power station. Located on the shores of Lake Macquarie in NSW, the black-fired power station is owned and operated by Origin Energy. It is scheduled to close in 2025, however the NSW government is trying to extend its operations.

EJA lawyers and community groups are concerned keeping Eraring burning coal longer will lock local communities into even more toxic air pollution, which is already having devastating health consequences. It will also mean the threat to Lake Macquarie from Eraring’s toxic coal ash dumps – which store the toxic byproduct of burning coal – will continue to grow.

Vales Point Power Station

Vales Point Power Station is on the southern banks of Lake Macquarie in central NSW, 100 kilometres north of Sydney.

The power station is owned by Czech company Sev.en Global and operated by Delta Electricity. Originally scheduled to close this decade, its new Czech owners are pushing to keep it burning black coal for years more.

Vales Point Power Station has dodged legal air pollution limits for almost a decade, allowing it to emit toxic nitrogen oxide pollution at almost twice the rate otherwise permitted under NSW laws for a power station of its age.

Each year in Australia, toxic air pollution from coal-burning power stations kills 800 people and worsens conditions such as asthma, emphysema, chronic bronchitis and other respiratory diseases. Nitrogen dioxide is strongly associated with childhood asthma and impaired lung development.

 And people shared solutions, too – many of them. Solutions the government can take to better regulate power stations, as well as to make sure communities aren’t left with a toxic mess when they close. Solutions the community has shared with governments and decision-makers, mining companies and power station operators before – and that they are still waiting for action on.

Solutions like fixing state and national clean air laws. Properly managing and rehabilitating coal ash dumps so that they don’t leak chemicals into precious places like Lake Macquarie. Ensuring transition authorities are properly set up to address legacy pollution as part of forward planning.

 A few days later, the UN Special Rapporteur travelled south to Victoria and met with the Latrobe Valley community, two hours east of Melbourne/Naarm. 

Incredible locals from advocacy groups Voices of the Valley and Friends of Latrobe Water met with the Special Rapporteur at the Yallourn coal mine lookout.

They told the UN delegate about the history of the Valley, including the devastation the community experienced during the infamous Hazelwood mine fire in 2017 and the impact of decades of exposure to toxic air pollution on the community’s health.

Yallourn Power Station

Yallourn Power Station in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley is among the most polluting power stations in the world. It produces the most climate pollution per unit of energy of any power station in the country, with an emissions intensity of over 1.34 tCO2-e/MWh2.

Yallourn coal mine and power station also emits more than 30 toxic substances, including fine particles (PM2.5), sulfur dioxide (SO2), mercury and oxides of nitrogen.

Yallourn emits the most toxic mercury of any power station in Australia, more than 400 kilograms per year.

The power station is the third-largest source of fine particle pollution (PM2.5), which is harmful to human health.

Communities living near coal-burning power stations are at greater risk of heart, lung and kidney diseases. Technology can reduce this toxic pollution and save lives but Yallourn’s owners EnergyAustralia have not installed it.

Vales Point Power Station

Vales Point Power Station is on the southern banks of Lake Macquarie in central NSW, 100 kilometres north of Sydney.

The power station is owned by Czech company Sev.en Global and operated by Delta Electricity. Originally scheduled to close this decade, its new Czech owners are pushing to keep it burning black coal for years more.

Vales Point Power Station has dodged legal air pollution limits for almost a decade, allowing it to emit toxic nitrogen oxide pollution at almost twice the rate otherwise permitted under NSW laws for a power station of its age.

Each year in Australia, toxic air pollution from coal-burning power stations kills 800 people and worsens conditions such as asthma, emphysema, chronic bronchitis and other respiratory diseases. Nitrogen dioxide is strongly associated with childhood asthma and impaired lung development.

Wendy Farmer, a local resident and member, of Voices of the Valley, gifted the Special Rapporteur a bag of coal dust that had settled on her plants the day prior – a powerful testimony to the direct impact that coal pollution has on this community.

Like in New South Wales, community members also spoke about what the Victorian government can do to better regulate pollution; solutions the community has been advocating for decades.

They want to see pollution controls installed at coal-fired power stations, health-based air emissions limits for industry, improved air quality and heavy metals monitoring, and a high standard for the rehabilitation of coal ash sites and coal mines for the Latrobe Valley and the rest of Australia.

Lake Macquarie meeting photos by Edwina Richards.

Feature image child at sunset

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