New Study Links Mountaintop Removal to 60,000 Cancer Cases

A breakthrough study suggests that among residents living in mountaintop removal mining counties, 60,000 cases of cancer can be directly tied to strip-mining practices. Researchers behind the study gathered data from communities impacted by mountaintop mining in Boone County, West Virginia.

The new study, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Community Health: The Publication for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, said that the odds for reporting cancer were twice as high in mountaintop mining environments as they were in non mining environments. Surface water and ground water around the impacted areas are contaminated with elevated sulfates, iron, hydrogen sulfide, lead, magnesium, calcium and aluminum. The researchers also found elevated levels of airborne particulate matter that included silica and sulfur compounds.

A group of leaders from the Appalachian community went to Washington D.C. last month to ask President Obama and the EPA to enact an immediate moratorium on all mountaintop removal mining operations in West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia until the Center for Disease Control assesses the health violations related to mountaintop removal mining. They also delivered a new study on the link between birth defect and mountaintop removal mining.

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