Appalachian Community Health Emergency Kick Starts Mountaintop Removal Campaign in Washington, D.C.

Besieged residents living amid the fallout of the mountaintop removal crisis in the central Appalachian coalfields are descending on Washington, D.C. today, as part of a new emergency health campaign calling for an immediate moratorium on "the toxic coal acquisition process that has been shown to be associated with heart-breaking birth defects, cardiac problems, lung problems and systemic failures in other human organs."

Carting along reams of shocking peer-reviewed scientific studies that have been ignored by their own elected officials, the Appalachian Community Health Emergency (ACHE) marks the launch of a weekly frontline citizens initiative in Washington, D.C. with national human rights and health organizations to prod the Obama administration to enact a moratorium on mountaintop removal operations until a federal study and long-awaited Congressional hearings are carried out on the spiraling mountaintop removal mining health care crisis.

One of the most unnecessary environmental and human rights violations in the nation, mountaintop removal mining provides less than 5-7 percent of national coal production, while detonating millions of pounds of daily explosives that have ruined historic communities and watersheds in West Virginia, Kentucky, southwest Virginia and eastern Tennessee since 1970.

On the heels of a major new study by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy on the "stalled out" environmental movement, which urged major funders and foundations to support similar community-based groups most impacted by environmental injustice, the ACHE campaign is also a breakthrough effort of frontline coalfield groups to "kick-start" environmental and civil rights groups and ramp up the movement to abolish devastating mountaintop removal mining operations.

"My generation deserves a healthy life," said Ferg Kincaid, a 16-year-old from Fayette County, West Virginia who was joined by former coal mining families and afflicted community members with the Christians for the Mountains, Coal River Mountain Watch, and Mountain Health & Heritage Association, among other groups. "As long as Mountaintop Removal is going on, we don't even have a chance."

The Appalachian Community Health Emergency is a timely new national initiative, as other state and local campaigns to outlaw mountaintop removal move through committees in state legislatures in Tennessee and Kentucky, and West Virginia activists block mining on historic Blair Mountain, among other areas.

In a press release, the ACHE campaign declared "that all Americans should be able to live in healthy communities":

The mission of the Appalachian Community Health Emergency (A.C.H.E.) campaign is nothing short of the abolition of Mountaintop Removal, beginning with an immediate moratorium on the toxic coal acquisition process that has been shown to be associated with heart-breaking birth defects, cardiac problems, lung problems and systemic failures in other human organs.

We will reach our vision by employing the findings of scientific, peer‐reviewed research to educate government, public and private sectors and engage in a dialogue with agencies such as, but not limited to, the Environmental Protection Agency, the United States Department of Justice, the United States Department of Health and Human Services, the American Cancer Society, the America Lung Association, and the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The key health effects that we will be sharing information about are as follows:

1. Babies born to mothers who smoke during pregnancy HAVE AN 18% HIGHER RISK OF BIRTH DEFECTS; however, babies born to mothers who live in areas with mountain top removal mining HAVE A 26 % HIGHER RATE OF BIRTH DEFECTS. Additionally, it was found that this risk is 42% HIGHER OVER THE COURSE OF THE STUDY PERIOD FROM YEARS 2000‐2003 and 181% HIGHER DURING MORE RECENT YEARS, SPECIFICALLY FOR A HEART OR LUNG DEFECT.* (Ahern, MM, et al, Environ. Res., (2011), DOI: 10.1016/j.envres.2011.05.19)

2. Babies born to mothers who live in areas with high levels of coalmining HAVE A 16% HIGHER CHANCE OF BEING BORN UNDER WEIGHT.* (Ahern, et al, Maternal and Child Health J, DOI: 10.1007/s10995‐009‐0555‐1)

3. People who live in areas with mountaintop removal mining HAVE HIGHER DEATH RATES compared to people who do not live near MTR mining.* (Hendryx, Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice Volume 4, Number 3, Spring 2011, pp. 44‐53)

4. People who live in areas where there is mountaintop removal mining HAVE HIGHER RATES OF DEATH FROM CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE, (HEART DISEASE).* (Esch & Hendryx; The Journal of Rural Health; 00; 2011; 1‐8)

5. People who live in areas with high rates of coal production HAVE HIGHER RATES OF DEATH FROM CERTAIN CANCERS, (BREAST, LUNG, DIGESTIVE, URINARY).* (Hendryx & Hitt; Ecohealth; 2011, DOI: 10.1007/s10393‐101‐0297‐y)

6. People who live in counties with mountaintop removal mining report significantly MORE DAYS OF POOR PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH AND LIMITATIONS OF THEIR ACTIVITY.* (Am J Public Health. 2011;101:848-853. DOI: 10. 2105/AJPH.2010.300073)

"Appalachian people must have relief," said Naoma resident Bo Webb. "The evidence is clear that mountaintop removal is more dangerous for an expectant mother even than smoking. No government concerned with the health of its citizens can let this go on in the face of such disturbing science."

More information on the new campaign is at the Appalachian Community Health Emergency website.

 

 

 

Comments

[Holly Clark]

01:59 PM on 04/19/2012

Ahern has found that mortality rates in KY, TN, VA, and WV have increased in MTR regions. From 1999 to 2005, there were 4,432 "excess deaths" in Appalachia. It has also been found that babies born to mothers who live in areas with mountain top removal mining have a 26% higher rate of birth defects. That compares to babies born to mothers who smoke during pregnancy who only have an 18% higher risk of birth defects.

[Holly Clark]

01:59 PM on 04/19/2012

Hendryx shared the findings from air, water, and soil sampling near MTR sites. He's found that silica and other elements are in high presence in the air. Preliminary laboratory tests, using air samples from areas where people are living in Appalachia, show mountaintop removal mining dust kills heart cells and impairs vascular function. Hendryx has also begun studying the diesel contaminant health impact in MTR environments.

[Holly Clark]

01:58 PM on 04/19/2012

Bernhardt shared the cumulative impacts of MTR on an Appalachian watershed: complete ecosystem losses; biological (e.g., decreases in organism diversity); hyrdological (e.g., increases in flooding, disruptions in groundwater flow paths, water contamination). She also stated that 1385 square miles of forests have been converted to mines and 2400 miles of streams have been buried. When talking about land change, Bernhardt explained that mining has affected 6% of the land verses development, having only changed 3.5%. "A poor stream condition index is a strong predictor of worse human health," said Bernhardt.

[Holly Clark]

01:58 PM on 04/19/2012

Dr. Margaret Palmer of the University of Maryland, Dr. Emily Bernhardt of Duke University, Dr. Michael Hendryx of West Virginia University, and Dr. Melissa Ahern of Washington State University presented a range and depth of peer-reviewed scientific studies and data that show severe water degradation and community health problems in mountaintop removal mining areas at Senate and Health briefings this week. Palmer opened by giving attendees an overview of MTR.

[lightningbolt]

08:36 AM on 02/29/2012

Politicians won't listen until the residents of these areas start blocking roads and blocking entrances to the coal mines.

[jaygray]

08:03 AM on 02/29/2012

The crux of the challenge is that the very people who are poisoned by coal mining embrace that industry - with very few exceptions like Bo Webb. It is something of an insular sub-culture, even within the states that do it such as West Virginia.

Few in this mining part of Appalachia can even conceive of a world with clean energy - it is a world where they are not needed or wanted. It is easier to be proud of the dangers they face mining, logging, driving trucks on narrow roads.

Part of the solution is getting people to look at what they are doing to their families. Another is clean energy industry manufacturing to revive a few of the old mill and deep-mining towns of Appalachia. The rest... I don't know but it has to be done.

[Ihaveadream]

08:06 PM on 02/28/2012

Tell it like it is, coal companies have always thought of the miners and the people who live around those deposits as DISPOSABLE. Same goes for the oil companies (BP and the gulf residents) and the gas and chemical companies Haliburton loophole fracking chemicals that poison the water.

So as long as our representatives in our government (that long ago started out as for the people) allows these people corporations to continue to get away with it, the real people will continue to be DISPOSABLE.

[Ihaveadream]

09:38 PM on 02/28/2012

I say this having a grandfather who was a coal miner and died an early death due to complications from black lung from years in the coal mines in the mountains of West Virginia. Nothing will change unless all of the states and our Congress mandate (no loopholes) that energy corporations be made to comply with health, safety and environmental regulations.