Makayla Urias, 8, from Pike County, Kentucky holds contaminated water samples taken from her home which is surrounded by mountaintop removal coal mining.
If you haven't played with the new interactive map at iLoveMountains.org, please go check it out.
Over the past few years, several health studies on the interrelationship of human health and mountaintop removal coal mining have added to the urgency -- an urgency understood by citizens of Appalachia for many years -- to keep the mountains intact. Scientific evidence that this destructive mining practice hurts people and nature is piling up just about as fast now as surface mine operators can blow up the mountains and pile mining waste into Appalachian waters!
The interactive map will allow you to explore the relationship of mountaintop removal coal mining to poverty, changes in life expectancy, birth defect rates, or deaths from cancer, heart or respiratory diseases. The map allows you to view the data at various scales, from regional to state to county-level correlations.
You can also view summaries of the studies that correlate mountaintop removal coal mining with human health consequences.
After you play with the map, please visit the iLoveMountains action page. It lists several things anyone can do to make sure Makayla Urias and every other child in Appalachia has a fair chance for a long, happy and healthy life.
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