CBSE Class 10 Answered

'Times immemorial' refers to decades ago.

There are a number of adverse health and environmental effects of coal burning[48] especially in power stations, and of coal mining. These effects include:

Coal-fired power plants shorten nearly 24,000 lives a year in the United States, including 2,800 from lung cancer.
Generation of hundreds of millions of tons of waste products, including fly ash, bottom ash, flue gas desulfurization sludge, that contain mercury, uranium, thorium, arsenic, and other heavy metals
Acid rain from high sulfur coal
Interference with groundwater and water table levels
Contamination of land and waterways and destruction of homes from fly ash spills such as Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill
Impact of water use on flows of rivers and consequential impact on other land-uses
Dust nuisance
Subsidence above tunnels, sometimes damaging infrastructure