ABSTRACT
Energy technologies present risks to human health; these risks can vary from predictable small increases in the usual illness rates among the general public to well-documented accidents to coal miners. In any case, they constitute an important cost of electricity and other energy technologies that is not usually included in any societal balance sheet. Unfortunately, it is hard to compare the number of fatalities, illnesses, and injuries with dollar costs of energy production. In fact, it is difficult, if not impossible, to express all health risks themselves in the same type of units. Nevertheless, these important impacts must be considered; here both fatalities and illnesses, but especially fatalities, are utilized as a measure of the impacts from various technologies.
