The Harmful Effects Of Coal Mining Environmental Sciences Essay

The Harmful do Of Coal Mining Environmental Sciences EssayCoal exploit especially surface dig requires large areas of land to be temporary disturbed. It causes and estimate of harmful effects. This raises environmental and human challenges, including, the impact of its activities on the neighboring community, impacts on biodiversity, weewee and manner taint.Trees, plants, and topsoil are cleared from blacken exploit areas, destroying forests and wildlife habitat, encouraging soil erosion and floods, and stirring up dust pollution that rat cause respiratory problems in local communities. Underground mining, including an intensifier method cognise as long wall mining, leaves behind exculpate underground spaces which hatful collapse and cause the land above to sink. cognise as subsidence, this process washstand cause serious structural handicap to homes, buildings, and roads when the land collapses beneath them. This destructive mining method destroys habitat, eliminate s forests, and reparation local property. The g perpetuallyywherenment estimates that if this mining continues unabated Appalachia it will destroy 1.4 million acres of land by 2020.Coal mining and scorch homework both stir up small dust and coal particles, which ruffle with other chemicals in the air and can cause serious and potentially fatal respiratory problems like shocking lung. About 75 portion of all local shipments in the U.S. are made via railroads, which are maven of the nations largest sources of coat and smog pollution. Both soot andFig. 1. A cartoon shows the environmental effects of coal mining (Joel Pett).smog can cause closelyness problems, including respiratory problems and increased risk of asthma attacks. Coal-laden railcars and trucks also cause soot pollution when coal dust blows off into the surrounding air. Coal mining anaesthetises about 26 percent of all energy-related methane emissions in the U.S. each socio-economic class. Methane is a global w arning gas more than 20 times as potent as carbon dioxide, and is released from surrounding rocks when coal is mined, as well as during coal preparation and transportation.According to the Intergovernmental Panel on humour Change, methane has a global warming potential 21 times greater than that of carbon dioxide on a 100 year time line. turn burning coal in power plants is most harmful to air quality, due to the emission of insidious gases, the process of mining can release pockets of hazardous gases. These gases may pose a threat to coal miners as well as a source of air pollution. This due to the residuum of pressure and fracturing of the strata during mining activity, which gives rise to serious safety concerns for the coal miners if non managed properly. The buildup of pressure in the strata can lead to explosions during or after the mining process if prevention methods, such as methane draining are non taken.A common source of superman mine drainage is inclined mines t hat fill with water supply that becomes acidic and mixes with heavy metals and minerals. When this toxic water leaks out, it combines with groundwater and streams, do water pollution, damaging soils, and harming humans and animals. For example, in Pennsylvania alone acid mine drainage has polluted more than 3,000 miles of streams and ground waters, which affects all quad major river basins on the state. Coal preparation uses large quantities of water and chemicals to dissolve impurities from mined coal, washing away the wastes in a sludge known as slurry. Up to 90 million gallons of slurry are produced every year in the U.S. In 2000, a 72-acre slurry impoundment in Martin County, KY b celestial orbited, spilling 250 million gallons of water and 31 million gallons of local wastes into the local watershed-over twenty times the add together of oil spil direct when the Exxon Valdez ran aground. Mountaintop removal mining involves literally blowing the tops off mountains to reach th in seams of coal. Then, to minimize waste disposal costs, mining companies dump millions of loads of waste rock into the valleys and streams below, causing permanent damage to the ecosystem and landscape. This destructive dress has damaged or destroyed approximately 1,200 miles of streams, disrupted drinking water supplies, and flooded communities.Black lung is a group of respiratory disease in coal miners that can cause serious lung disease and death. About 12,000 miners died from black lung in the U.S. in the ten-year period ending in 2002. Symptoms include coughing, ptyalise up black material, shortness of breath, and eventual hardening and scarring of the lungs. Although some of the symptoms can be alleviated, there is no known cure for black lung and retroversion of the symptoms.Like all occupational diseases, black lung is man-made and can be prevented. In fact, the U.S. Congress ordered black lung to be eradicated from the coal persistence in 1969. Today, it is estimated that former coal miners each year die an torturesome death in often isolated rural communities, away from the billet of publicity.Those who are falling ill and dying are not except the coal miners. Everyone who lives near the mines or processing plants or transportation centers is bear on by chronic socioeconomics weakness that takes a tool on senior status and health. Residents of coal- mining communities have long complained of impaired health. This study substantiates their claims. Those residents are at an increased risk of developing chronic heart, lung and kidney diseases (Michael Hendryx).Coal mining can destroy sources of local revenue, including losses from tourism and recreation, such as the estimated $67 million lost annually in Pennsylvania from sport fish because of streams too polluted from acid mine drainage. Coal mining can also damage homes and decrease property value, making it hard for hoi polloi to sell their houses and move. Coal mining has been a decrea sing source of jobs over the last two decades and is still considered to be one of the most dangerous jobs in America. Estimates of mining production and working coal miners show that amongst 1985 and 2005 mining production in the U.S. increased 22 percent, while the fall of coal miners decreased by about 55 percent. The average income of coal miners has also been on the decline, dropping 20 percent over the uniform period. In 1952, Alabama became the first state to provide compensation for coal workers pneumoconiosis. A few years later, Virginia recognized the disease as paying(prenominal), just pressures were exerted the following year and the amendment was repealed. Pennsylvania enacted legislation effective on celestial latitude 1, 1965, and Virginia again amended its compensation law in 1968.Late in 1968, a number of miners organized the West Virginia Black Lung Association, which successfully led a campaign to introduce a bill in the 1969 session of the West Virginia leg islature making coal workers pneumoconiosis a compensable disease. The compensation bill was quickly made a major passing by the Black Lung Association and militant miners in February when the legislation ran into foe from the coal-operator-dominated legislature. Most of the 40,000 miners in West Virginia walked out of the mines, and large number of them marched on the state capitol in Charleston demanding passage of the bill. This was one of the largest and longest strikes ever on the single issue of occupational health.