No, solar panels aren’t constantly oozing toxins. These and other myths the fossil-fuel industry would like you to believe about solar are easily debunked.
Source: simon_ritchie2000
No, solar panels aren’t constantly oozing toxins. These and other myths the fossil-fuel industry would like you to believe about solar are easily debunked.
Source: simon_ritchie2000
6 Comments
From Bloomberg Opinion (gift link above):
“Solar was still the biggest source of new energy in the US last year, making up 54% of all additions, compared with just 8% for natural gas. Solar and battery storage combined made up 79% of new US energy sources in 2025. But its growth has decelerated, mostly because of President Donald Trump’s [whole-of-government assault](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-opinion-trump-climate-rollback?srnd=undefined) on clean energy.
“But another factor hurting solar in the US is growing local opposition based on [fears about the impacts](https://www.propublica.org/article/michigan-solar-farms-health-concerns-st-clair-county) of solar farms on human health, ProPublica reported recently. It cited the county of St. Clair, Michigan, which last year [made it harder](https://www.stclaircounty.org/Uploads/BoC/resolutions/2025-13.pdf) to build new solar installations on rural land, citing worries about noise pollution, “visual pollution” and the risk of toxic waste. This decision was based on [memos](https://stclaircounty.org/PageBuilder/scchd/Uploads/20241125%20Memorandum.pdf) from the county [health chief](https://stclaircounty.org/PageBuilder/scchd/Uploads/20250108%20Memorandum%20-%20Copy%201.pdf) suggesting these issues posed “an unreasonable threat to public health.”
“Noise, ugliness and toxic waste are just a few of the health-related worries cited in recent years in Michigan, Ohio and other places to block or slow down solar development. What follows is a somewhat longer, if still only partial, list. Many of these worries are understandable. All of them are easily refuted.”
Humans are incredibly flawed. They watch cars drive by spewing waste that is proven to shorten lives where there are many cars and not even register the threat.
Later they hop on the internet and believe all types of weird claims.
It’s a look into how galatically stupid the people in fossil fuel are.
I’m not against solar, I am against putting solar in places like farm fields or undeveloped forests.
Here in Maine, the DOT requires that new developments have parking lots sized to meet maximum demand, so things like an Amazon facility that maintains 250 employees annually, but might seasonally hire an additional 50p to meet demand requires the parking areas to be sized to meet that. Virtually most of that space goes unused for the bulk of the year, so why not also require on site power generation over 50% of the lot of something? Instead we take high quality farm fields and slap solar on them and change the stormwater runoff capacity of the fields for the life of the development if not temporally longer.
Simply living near a coal burning plant lowers average life expectancy 10 years. Working in the coal industry can lower life expectancy 10-15 years. It similar for gas and oil. And the US is littered with toxic waste sites from the fossil fuel industry.
What we are seeing is like if you say say lions make bad pets because they can kill, the fossil fuel people replying that baby kitten can scratch you too. Only in this case the kitten was declawed.
If you look at the CO2 power map. The US is almost unique in how carbon intense it is to electricity generation. It’s on pay with third world countries. The FF industry is really going at it with stupid propaganda these uneducated hicks are lapping up.