They say the air monitors at Labadie, for instance, aren't in the right places to reliably detect the main plume of emissions from the plant. They also point to the difficulties of environmental enforcement, particularly at half-century-old coal plants that can be exempted from Clean Air Act laws.

"It's just so absolutely absurd that it's beyond belief," said Mahfood. "I was unhappy about it 20 years ago and I'm still unhappy with it."

They also argue the sulfur dioxide emissions are only part of the problem:

Labadie, based in Franklin County, is also the second-largest producer of greenhouse gases among the nation's coal plants, according to the EPA data.

4,000 excess deaths

Sulfur dioxide, or SO2, which helps harmful particulate matter form in the air, causes or exacerbates a wide range of health problems, including asthma.

And it can affect a sprawling geographic footprint, as fine particle pollution resulting from SO2 emissions "can blow hundreds of miles away," according to the American Lung Association.

St. Louis-area researchers who study sulfur dioxide and its impacts had not studied the downwind effects of the pollutant from the region's coal plants, and they didn't know anyone here who had.

Some national studies, however, have examined the health impacts from U.S. coal plants.

And one of those included Labadie in its research. That study, published in the journal Science in November, uses Medicare records to estimate the number of deaths tied to air pollution from coal plants.

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