Photo of Hobet 21 mountaintop removal mining complex, by Vivian Stockman, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition

A major new study out today in one of the most respected scientific journals around confirms the pervasive and irreversible impacts of mountaintop removal coal mining here in Appalachia. The study is called Cumulative impacts of mountaintop mining on an Appalachian watershed, and it appears online today in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The conclusion by Duke University researcher Ty Lindberg and colleagues, including Emily Bernhardt:

Our results demonstrate the cumulative impact of multiple mines within a single catchment and provide evidence that mines reclaimed nearly two decades ago continue to contribute significantly to water quality degradation within this watershed.

As explained in a Duke news release:

To assess the cumulative impact of the more than 100 permitted discharge outlets draining approximately 28 square kilometers of active and reclaimed mountaintop coal mines in the Upper Mud watershed, the Duke researchers collected 152 sets of samples from 23 sites – including two sites upstream of any active or reclaimed surface mines – between May and December 2010. They sampled for electrical conductivity, a measure of salinity and for concentrations of major ions and trace elements derived from coal or its matrix rock.

The Upper Mud flows through sparsely populated sections of Boone and Lincoln counties in southern West Virginia as a headwater stream until reaching its impoundment in the Mud River reservoir 25 kilometers downstream. For about 10 kilometers, the river passes through the Hobet 21 surface mining complex, which has been active since the 1970s and is among the largest in the Appalachian coalfields region.

Here’s a figure they used in the paper:

Map of study area depicting Upper Mud River and associated tributaries with aerial photo on right. Sampling sites consisted of 15 mainstem (circles)
and eight named tributary locations (triangles). Sites 1 and 2 were located upstream of current and historic MTM activity. The remaining sites were chosen so as to bracket each confluence of the Upper Mud River and an MTM-affected tributary. Marker color denotes median conductivity level in mainstem during survey (green <300, orange 301 to 500, red 501 to 1,000, and dark red >1;000 μS cm−1). Brown shaded areas reflect surface mining with darker area representing reclaimed mines. Aerial photo on right shows location of 105 active surface-mining-related outlets within the watershed that are regulated through eight NPDES permits. Inset of US mid-Atlantic states shows Appalachian coalfield region as gray shaded area with relative location of study site in red (not to scale).
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Their findings:

All conductivity measurements taken downstream of mine discharge outlets exceeded levels known to be harmful to aquatic life, said Richard Di Giulio, professor of environmental toxicology. At the two sampling sites upstream of any mines, conductivity levels were within an acceptable range. Concentrations of selenium, a known fish toxin, followed a similar trend, Di Giulio said. The researchers also observed deformities typical of selenium exposure in fish collected from downstream waters.

Co-author Avner Vengosh, professor of geochemistry and water quality, said:

As eight separate mining-impacted tributaries flowed into the Upper Mud, conductivity and concentrations of selenium, sulfate, magnesium and other inorganic solutes increased proportionately. Nearly 90 percent of the variation in trace elements and salinity could be explained by the amount of upstream surface mining.

According to the news release:

The Duke team selected the Upper Mud watershed for their field survey because water-quality impacts from other potential sources are largely absent. Historically, surface rather than underground mining has been the dominant form of coal extraction in the Upper Mud’s river basin, and there are very few people now living within the Hobet mine’s permitted boundary. This helped to minimize other factors that might account for changes in water quality.

Emily Bernhardt, associate professor of biogeochemistry, said:

This is a remarkably clean dataset and that’s why it’s so powerful. We see these incredibly strong patterns, which previously have not been well established.

Past studies have shown that individual mines profoundly impact stream water quality, biological community structure and ecosystem function immediately downstream of valley fills, but empirical data on the cumulative impacts of multiple mining operations on larger downstream rivers has been lacking, she said, adding:

Individual permitting decisions are typically made without consideration of the extent of historic mining impacts already occurring within a watershed. Our survey helps fill that gap.

Coal River Mountain as seen from nearby Kayford Mountain. Photo courtesy of Coal River Mountain Watch.

There’s another new study out from West Virginia University’s Michael Hendryx, this one reporting, based on a community survey in the Coal River area of Boone and Raleigh counties:

Self-reported cancer rates were significantly higher in the mining versus non-mining areas after control for respondent age, sex, smoking, occupational history and family history.

Mountaintop mining is linked to increased community cancer risk. Efforts to reduce cancer and other health disparities in Appalachia must focus on mountaintop mining portions of the region.

The study, “Self-Reported Cancer Rates in Two Rural Areas of West Virginia with and without Mountaintop Coal Mining,” (subscription required)  was published online in the Journal of Community Health.

Hendryx co-authored the paper with Leah Wolfe and Juhua Luo of the WVU Department of Community Medicine. Also listed as a co-author is Bo Webb, a Coal River resident and activist who has long been concerned about the health impacts of mountaintop removal.

The new study is based on 773 interviews with local residents, in a community survey that the researchers designed, in part to try to investigate the health concerns that Bo and other residents have been raising for years. As the paper explains:

Local residents in mountaintop mining areas of West Virginia identified the problem based on their personal experiences and the experiences of their neighbors. They witnessed, for example, the explosions at the mining sites and the dust that subsequently settled over their porches, windows and gardens. They collected bottles of well water from their kitchen taps that were black with impurities from coal treatment settling ponds. Concerns about the health impacts from these conditions led them to contact a university researcher for assistance. The researcher and community members worked together to identify the study focus, develop the approach, plan the logistics, recruit interviewers for a door–door survey, conduct the survey, collect and analyze the data, and report the results. Throughout the process, the importance of maintaining objectivity and using the best possible survey instruments and methods was emphasized by all parties.

The actual interviews were done in March and were conducted by undergraduate students from several local colleges and universities who volunteered to conduct the work as a service project during their spring break week. Interviews were conducted along the Coal River Valley in an area roughly stretching from the Seth-Prenter communities down to Rock Creek. Separate interviews were conducted in Pocahontas County, which was used as a comparison community.

The interviews revealed a cancer rate in the Coal River communities of 14 percent, compared to a rate of 9 percent in Pocahontas County. Researchers controlled for various other potential factors, including age, sex, smoking, occupational exposure and family cancer history (but not for obesity) — and found “Coal River subjects reported significantly higher odds of cancer”:

The odds for reporting cancer were twice as high in the mountaintop mining environment compared to the non-mining environment in ways not explained by age, sex, smoking, occupational exposure, or family cancer history.

While this study does not include data for exposure to any mining pollution, it does outline possible impacts:

Environmental pollution contributes to cancer risk, and many chemicals that are present in coal, coal strata and coal processing activities are established or possible carcinogens.

Arsenic, for example, is an impurity present in coal that is implicated in many forms of cancer including that of skin, bladder and kidney. Cadmium is linked to renal cancer. Diesel engines are widely used at mining sites, and diesel fuel is used for surface mining explosives, coal transportation and coal processing; diesel exhaust has been identified as a major environmental contributor to cancer risk.

The paper continues:

Previous research on Appalachian health disparities has tended to focus on health care access problems, or behavioral risks such as poor diet and smoking, as the causal factors driving poor health outcomes. A recent study in Virginia, for example, identified higher cancer rates among Appalachian compared to non-Appalachian residents, and discussed the need for better health care in Appalachia. However, Appalachian Virginia also has mountaintop coal mining, and the environmental, social and economic impacts of coal mining are often overlooked in Appalachian health research. Mountaintop coal mining is damaging to the environment, and contributes to the area’s chronic economic problems; these areas have the highest poverty rates and highest unemployment rates in the region. Poor economic conditions are one of the most powerful predictors of poor public health outcomes.

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Not content to let its lawyers comments about Appalachian inbreeding just fade away quietly, the National Mining Association this morning launched another attack on West Virginia University researcher Michael Hendryx and his colleagues for their recent study linking mountaintop removal to increased rates of birth defects in the coalfields.

It seems that the NMA (or perhaps its law firm) hired a firm called Exponent to produce this eight-page critique of the birth defects paper, and in a news release this morning, the lobby group’s vice president, Bruce Watzman, said:

A recent critique of the analysis completed by Dr. Michael Hendryx, as well as data from the state of West Virginia’s Birth Defects Surveillance System, raises doubts about the conclusions reached by Dr. Hendryx and his colleagues.

Does it really raise doubts?

Well, many of the things outlined by Exponent were already discussed — in a fair amount of detail — in the birth defects paper itself, in the second called, “Limitations of the Study.”

For example, Exponent opines that Dr. Hendryx and his co-authors did not adequately take into account other potential influences on birth defect rates, such as smoking, alcohol consumption, and other socioeconomic factors.

But the paper did attempt to take these other factors into account, and discussed some of the weaknesses in the way the authors were able to do this. For example, the paper says:

Self-reported data … on behaviors such as smoking and drinking during pregnancy are likely to contain error … reporting regarding birth defects is incomplete on birth certificates and is dependent on how easily anomalies are detected after birth and before data are compiled for the birth defects registration.

Also, the Exponent critique makes the point that, without direct exposure data, it’s impossible to say for sure what’s going on regarding any mining exposure and birth defects.

But the study itself discusses such matters:

In this exploratory study, we do not have the data to examine biological mechanisms by which mountaintop mining pollution may lead to brith defects. Investigating these potential mechanisms remains an important future research step.

And, the authors also were pretty clear that they’re not sure their paper has all the answers:

Elevated birth defect rates are partly a function of socioeconomic disadvantage, but remain elevated after controlling for those risks. Both socioeconomic and environmental influences in mountaintop mining areas may be contributing factors.

UPDATED:  Michael Hendryx has provided this response to the Exponent critique of his study.

It’s also worth considering the source of this critique of the birth defects study … just exactly who is Exponent and should we believe what they’re telling us?

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It’s no surprise that lawyers from the firm Crowell & Moring are attacking the latest study by Melissa Ahern and West Virginia University’s Michael Hendryx indicating that people who live near mountaintop removal operations face a greater risk of birth defects.

But the internet posting from four of the firm’s lawyers — Clifford J. Zatz, William L. Anderson, Kirsten L. Nathanson, and Monica M. Welt — was, well, here’s what it said:

The study failed to account for consanquinity [sic], one of the most prominent sources of birth defects.

UPDATED: Crowell and Moring appears to have deleted this post from their law firm website … luckily, I saved it and have reposted it here so everyone can see it.

UPDATE 2: Nicole Quigley, a spokeswoman for Crowell & Moring, has issued this comment in response to my questions about their webpost and its disappearance –

Our website alert is not intended to reflect views of the National Mining Association, but is an attempt to identify certain potential weaknesses of the study in question. Consanguinity is one of a number of commonly addressed issues in studies of this type, regardless of geography. Scientists address this consideration regularly because it can matter to scientific conclusions, and do so regardless of locale. We did not raise this issue with particular reference to any region, and we did not mean to imply any such thing. That said, we apologize for any offense taken, as none was intended. We can appreciate the view that our alert may not have provided enough context to explain the scientific points we aimed to address, and so have removed it from our site.

I first saw this on a Facebook posting from our friend Bob Kincaid of Coal River Mountain Watch.  Bob was not amused, alleging that Crowell & Moring (lawyers for the National Mining Association and various coal companies) had tried to blame the birth defects on “incest,” and writing in one comment:

Nice of the National Mining Association and their hired guns at Crowell-Moring to tell us how they REALLY feel about us!

I guess I really wanted to give the industry lawyers the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps they meant to simply suggest that having lots of people who are related — several generations, siblings, cousins — all living in nearby h0llows near mining operations was something that needed to be studied. After all, there is evidence that some birth defects can have genetic causes.

I looked up consanguinity (I was pretty sure that was the word they meant to use, not consanquinity) and found that it meant:

… The property of being from the same kinship as another person. In that respect, consanguinity is the quality of being descended from the same ancestor as another person. Consanguinity is an important legal concept in that the laws of many jurisdictions consider consanguinity as a factor in deciding whether two individuals may be married or whether a given person inherits property when a deceased person has not left a will.

So, I asked Michael Hendryx about this … here’s what he said:

Consanguinity refers to levels of shared ancestry. It is a reference to in-breeding, not necessarily incest, but still insulting.

Consanguinity it is not just the same families living in the same area unless related members of those families are interbreeding.

Maybe they are referring to third cousins or distant relatives that might intermarry, but   1) research on whether higher birth defects occurs for relatives more distant than first cousins is very sparse,  2) they’d have to argue that MTM areas had more of these interbreeding pockets than other rural areas, and  3) they still don’t account for the higher effects found in recent time and in proximity to higher mining. This is another one of these attempts to say what the effects “really” are as an excuse to deny the serious health problems in MTM areas that exist across many health outcome measures. The reasons are partly due to the poor socioeconomic conditions that mining creates (not that are correlated with mining, but that mining creates), and may be due to the environmental pollution caused by mining.

The whole thing reminded me of an important study (with a great title) by anthropologist Robert Tincher, “Night Comes to the Chromosomes: Inbreeding and Population Genetics in Southern Appalachia.” Based on 140 years’ worth of marriage records, the study concluded that “inbreeding levels in Appalachia … are neither unique nor particularly common to the region, when compared with those reported for populations elsewhere or at earlier periods in American history.”

I emailed all for of the lawyers listed as authors of the web posting, asking them to explain what they meant. I haven’t heard back from any of them yet today, but if I do, I’ll post what they have to say — or I invite them to comment directly on this blog.

I also asked Carol Raulston, spokeswoman for the National Mining Association, about all of this. She said her organization had no role in the law firm’s web posting, but that she didn’t think anyone was saying that inbreeding was the cause of the birth defects reported in the Hendryx paper.

By the way, here’s what Michael Hendryx had to say about the other criticisms of his latest paper:

The criticisms raised are to be expected. I disagree that we overstated our findings. I think we’ve been appropriately cautious in what we say about limitations of the study and conclusions. This paper can’t be considered in isolation but should be taken with the more than dozen other studies that continue to document serious health problems related to mining. Regarding the dose response critique specifically, we did measure earlier versus later effects and found stronger effects in the later period as effects of mining have accumulated. We also found spatial correlation effects indicating an effect as mining activity occurred in a greater number of surrounding counties. Both of these indicate greater effects with greater exposure — dose response.

I was out of town last week when news broke of the latest major scientific study about the serious public health impacts of mountaintop removal coal mining. My buddy Dr. Paul Nyden covered it for the Gazette with this front-page story, reporting:

Researchers found “significantly higher” rates of birth defects in areas with mountaintop removal mines than in non-mining regions in central Appalachia, according to a study released Tuesday.

The study “offers one of the first indications that health problems are disproportionately concentrated specifically in [mountaintop removal] areas. It’s significant not only to people who live in coalfields but to policymakers as well,” said Michael Hendryx, an epidemiologist at West Virginia University.

Hendryx is one of the authors of the study, titled “The Association between Mountaintop Mining and Birth Defects among Live Births in Central Appalachia, 1996-2003.”

“This study extends previous research on low birth weight and on adult morbidity and mortality in coal mining areas,” Hendryx said.

Now, one thing we know for sure is that whenever the coal industry says regulators are getting in their way, Appalachian political leaders are falling all over themselves to issue news releases reacting. And whenever that happens, the local media throughout the coalfields do their duty: Repeating without question the industry line.

But as I’ve scanned the papers, the wires and the web, I am not seeing much coverage of this ground-breaking study … Aside from Nyden’s story, I saw pieces from John Cheves from the Herald-Leader and Erica Peterson from WFPL News.  I also saw stories from Jim Bruggers at the Courier-Journal and national coverage from Rolling Stone, USA Today and Mother Jones.

But in West Virginia, at least, I didn’t see much from the local media. And gosh, I haven’t seen once single public official issue a news release expressing the slightest bit of concern about whether their constituents (or future constituents) are facing a greater risk of birth defects because of mountaintop removal.

Does the study deserve far more attention, from the media and from policymakers?

Well, here’s what our friend Michael Hendryx said in a news release issued by WVU:

We found that birth defects were significantly higher in mountaintop mining areas versus non-mining areas for six of seven types of defects: circulatory/respiratory, central nervous system, musculoskeletal, gastrointestinal, urogenital and ‘other’.

Overall, the prevalence rate for any defect was significant in both periods but was higher in the more recent period. In the earlier period the rate of birth defects was 13 percent higher in mountaintop mining areas and increased to 42 percent higher in the later period.

Is a 42 percent higher rate of birth defects in mountaintop removal areas big news? Is it a major public policy issue?

Well, Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, thinks a major review of the public health impacts of mountaintop removal by the National Research Council would be warranted:

To date, the research generated by university researchers and other scientists has been effectively ignored by Congress and other legislative bodies. Thus, the tragedy of mountaintop removal mining remains legal. To help break through this willful ignorance by Congress, bought and paid for by the coal industry and its allies, the National Research Council needs to intervene. Already published and peer reviewed research underscores the urgency to do so. The nation’s preeminent scientific agency needs to be heard on this issue: the National Academy of Sciences and its National Research Council were not established to be ignored.

Certainly every agency with any jurisdiction whatsoever over mountaintop removal mining needs to acknowledge by their actions the published research about the effects of mountaintop removal mining, whether they involve ecological destruction or birth defects.

To help those agencies, and to help legislatures and citizens as well, the National Research Council needs to commission a study of mountaintop removal’s ecological and public health effects in Appalachia.

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There’s a new study out from West Virginia University researchers that advances their previous work trying to understand the public health impacts of living near mountaintop removal mining operations (see here, here and here).

Emily Corio over at West Virginia Public Broadcasting reported on this first earlier today, and WVU’s Robert C. Byrd Health Science Center issued this press release on the study:

Research has shown an increase in health disparities as a result of coal mining in Appalachian communities. A new study conducted by the West Virginia University School of Medicine shows that the disparities are especially concentrated in mountaintop mining areas. Those areas have the greatest reductions in health-related quality of life even when compared with counties with other forms of coal mining.

The study itself, published in the current issue of the American Journal of Public Health, concludes:

Residents of mountaintop mining counties reported significantly more days of poor physical, mental, and activity limitation and poorer self-rated health compared with the other county groupings. Results were generally consistent in separate analyses by gender and age.

Mountaintop mining areas are associated with the greatest reductions in health-related quality of life even when compared with counties with other forms of coal mining.

Further:

These disparities partly reflect the chronic socioeconomic weaknesses inherent in coal-dependent economies and highlight the need for efforts at economic diversification in these areas. However, significant disparities persist after control for these risks and suggest that the environmental impacts of MTM may also play a role in the health problems of the area’s population.

Authors of the study were Keith J. Zullig and, yes, our friend Michael Hendryx, both of the medical school’s Department of Community Medicine.

Using a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention four-question survey, researchers talked to residents in West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia about their physical and metal health.

Researchers used data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, the world’s largest telephone health survey system.  Residents were divided into groups who lived near mountaintop removal mining, those who lived near other coal mining and those who didn’t live near any mining.

Zullig explained:

Self-rated health and health-related quality of life were significantly reduced among residents of mountaintop mining communities in the unadjusted and adjusted models.

Mountaintop mining county residents experience, on average, 18 more unhealthy days per year than do the other populations. That’s approximately 1,404 days, or almost four years, of an average American lifetime. When mountaintop mining and other coal mining counties were not separated in a previous study, there were 462 reduced health-related quality of life days across an average American life.

Hendryx said that  this study also looked at the health effects on both men and women.  A common belief is that if coal mining causes health problems, those problems are mostly occupational related problems experienced by coal miners themselves, he said.

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This just in from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency:

On September 28, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) independent Science Advisory Board (SAB) released their first draft review of EPA’s research into the water quality impacts of valley fills associated with mountaintop mining. In their draft review, the SAB supports EPA’s scientific research and agrees with EPA’s conclusion that valley fills are associated with increased levels of conductivity (a measure of water pollution for mining practices) in downstream waters, and that these increased levels of conductivity threaten stream life in surface waters.

“This independent review affirms that EPA is relying on sound analysis and letting science and only science guide our actions to protect human health and the environment,” said EPA’s Assistant Administrator for Water Pete Silva. “We will continue to follow the science and solicit input from all stakeholders as we safeguard water quality and protect the American people.”

The SAB reviewed EPA’s draft report “A Field-Based Aquatic Life Benchmark for Conductivity in Central Appalachian Streams,” which uses field data to derive an aquatic life benchmark for conductivity. The benchmark is intended to protect 95 percent of aquatic species in streams in the Appalachian region influenced by mountaintop mining and valley fills. Based on that science, EPA released guidance in April designed to minimize irreversible water quality impacts caused by mountaintop mining.

Following the completion of the external peer review and review of public comments, the report will be revised and published as a final report.

A growing body of scientific literature, including previous and new studies performed by EPA, show significant damage to local streams that are polluted with the mining runoff from mountaintop removal. To protect water quality, EPA has identified a range of conductivity (a measure of the level of salt in the water) of 300 to 500 microSiemens per centimeter that is generally consistent with protecting life in Appalachian streams. The maximum benchmark conductivity of 500 microSiemens per centimeter is a measure of salinity that is roughly five times above normal levels.

The draft Science Advisory Board report is available here.