Bodies' Exhibit May Explain Why MTR Mining is Happening

The biggest source of electricity in the U.S. is coal, easily the most damaging to the health of human beings and all life on Earth. I personally learned of this in July 2008 when I attended the Bodies exhibit at the Maryland Science Center. This exhibit was made possible because people agreed to donate their body parts when they passed away to help educate people about human health. I saw three sets of lungs there. First, there was a deceased non-smoker's lungs, which had a healthy, reddish-pink look. Then, I saw a smoker's lungs, which had looked grey and slightly smaller than the non-smoker's lungs. Finally, my jaw dropped when I saw a coal miner's lungs, which had turned black and shrank even more than the smoker's lungs. It looked almost as if the coal miner's lungs had turned into two giant lumps of coal.

Perhaps, a desire to avoid the liability for miners' health explains why coal companies operating in Appalachia started the practice of mountaintop removal (MTR)coal mining, which has even more disastrous consequences to the communities where it takes place. Mountain Justice (www.mountainjusticesummer.org), a West Virginia non-profit committed to ending MTR, explains the damage it does, including clear-cutting of forests, giant pieces of "fly rock", coal ash that pollutes the air, and millions of pounds of mining waste that contaminates the streams below. The plants and trees that are removed make the adjacent valleys prone to flooding.

The awareness of mountaintop removal coal mining is spreading. I first became aware of this last year when I volunteered at the Power Shift national youth global warming conference in February-March 2009 in Washington, D.C. Recently, I have seen
books such as "Plundering Appalachia: The Tragedy of Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining" and "Coal Country: Rising Up Against Mountaintop Removal Mining" in bookstores and on Amazon. Hopefully this awareness will do two things: make the EPA ban this practice permanently; and lead more people to invest in clean, renewable energy.