Mountaintop Mining and Birth Defects

Are they related? That's the question a recent study seems to answer. And the answer is yes.

The study looked at 1.9 million birth records in Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee and Virginia from 1996 to 2003 and then compared the number of reported birth defects in those states' counties with mountaintop removal against their counties with no coal mining and counties with only underground coal mines. The study's conclusion? "Rates for any anomaly were approximately 235 per 100,000 live births in the mountaintop mining area versus 144 per 100,000 live births in the non-mining area." And the defects were not all minor. They included "malformed hearts and genitalia, circulatory and respiratory ailments, cleft lip, spina bifida, club foot and diaphragmatic hernia."

I wish they had also compared mountaintop to underground mining.