Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Yielding To The Necessities Of A Great Public Industry: Denial And Concealment Of The Harmful Health Effects Of Coal Mining, Caitlyn Greene, Patrick Charles Mcginley

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

In the mid-nineteenth century, coal mined in Central Appalachia began to flow into industrial markets. Those mines and the coal they produced provided jobs, put food on family tables in coalfield households, and even provided housing for hundreds of thousands of coal miners and their families. The bounty from America’s expanding coalfields fueled the Industrial Revolution and powered the nation’s steel mills, factories,steamboats, and railroads. It powered America’s defense through two World Wars and later military conflicts. Coal-fired power plants generated more than half of the electricity used in the United States in the latter quarter of the twentieth century. …