Rating:

5.0 (2 votes)

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - Poverty in Appalachia is concentrated in the communities around mountaintop removal mines, and people living in those areas suffer greater risk of early deaths, according to West Virginia University study.

The study by Michael Hendryx, an associate professor in the WVU Department of Community Medicine, found that mountaintop mining areas in West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia had significantly higher annual death rates, higher total poverty rates and child poverty rates compared to other counties in 2000-07.

The study appears in the current Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice, The Charleston Gazette reported.

Hendryx also noted that residents near mountaintop removal mines face the combined risks of exposure to potential environmental hazards from coal and mining-related chemicals, along with economic vulnerability that comes with low education, depressed property values and employment instability.

Hendryx's study doesn't attempt to determine whether mountaintop removal causes poverty, though he says other researchers already have identified the effects of mining "on such factors as depressed property values, employment declines and volatility, and foregone alternative economic opportunities."

Different communities might be exposed to different toxins or contamination from coal processing or mine drainage, so Hendryx said researchers must take the next step and identify personal levels of exposure and what effects they have on people's health.

The poverty and mortality study follows another paper Hendryx co-authored with Melissa Ahern of Washington State University, revealing that residents near mountaintop removal mines suffer greater birth-defect rates than those living near other mining or no mining at all. Anti-mountaintop removal activists point to the research to show that the issue affects humans, not just animals or streams.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials have also cited the birth-defect research, mentioning it last week in issuing new water-quality guidance aimed at reducing pollution downstream from large-scale mining operations.

"Possible human health impacts from coal mining activities have also been documented, including peer-reviewed public health literature that has preliminarily identified associations between increases in surface coal mining activities and increasing rates of cancer, birth defects, and other health problems in Appalachian communities," EPA said in its new guidance document.

Coal industry officials and coal-state political leaders have blasted the EPA guidance, and are working to block the federal agency's actions.
---
Information from: The Charleston Gazette, http://www.wvgazette.com

Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.