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Effects on health of coal mining
Easy on effect of Coal mining
Positive and negative impacts of coal on people and the environment
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Coal Mining
Coal, a mineral I have discussed previously, is necessary to our everyday lives. Coal is an incredible source of energy; it heats our houses and buildings, and also fuels stoves. You may often wonder where this extremely useful mineral comes from. Coal does not just appear; it needs to be mined through a process which results in our being able to utilize it. Coal mining is fairly inexpensive, is carried out on a large scale and can be mined in either underground or surface mines.
Surface mining is the coal mining process that accounts for around 60% of the United States’ coal. It tends to be very efficient, with a single worker recovering up to 30 to 40 tons of coal in a day. To begin surface mining coal, a drill must first probe the area to be mined in order to determine the depth of the coal as well as the overburden which lies on top of the coal. Bulldozers are then used to strip away the topsoil, which is then put into piles and later replace the stripped areas of earth. Next, large, even enormous equipment called draglines are used to remove more and more of the overburden, as the stripping becomes deeper and deeper. After this process, machines called track-dozers fracture the coal, making it possible for cranes or bulldozers to scoop out the coal and transport it to crushers. Now, the topsoil that was set aside at the beginning is replaced. This process is called reclamation. The mined areas can then be used for a variety of things: from parks to f...
Both the National Mining Associations, U.S News, Office of Surface Mining have studied environmental and economical issues and numerous newspaper articles found on the subject. Here is a brief overview on what mountaintop removal is. Mountaintop removal is a type of surface mining that has been granted a variance of approximate original contour and extracts an entire coal seam or seams running through the upper fraction of a mountain, ridge, or hill. The coal must be extracted by removing all the overburden [topsoil] and by creating a level plateau or supporting certain post-mining land uses.
One major business of the Appalachian mountain range is the coal mining industry; the range is the second-highest supplier of coal in America (Wuerthner, 2008). A common method of coal-extraction, mountaintop removal, results in mountain peaks becoming plateaus. The use of 300 million pounds of an explosive, ammonium nitrate rich fuel allows miners to remove hundreds of feet off mountain peaks each day, making the underlying coal more accessible and thus the extraction more efficient (Reece, 2006 & Shnayerson, 2008). The proces...
Coal was the cutting edge of energy generation before any other source was extensively used. Wood, wind, water, and muscle power provided nearly all of the energy before the widespread adoption of coal. The greater energy density of coal provides a greater efficiency than these other methods of generating power; combine that greater efficiency with its ease of transportation and coal easily becomes the fuel of a nation. In its early days, coal was mined and consumed in England, a country short on wood and usable water power. This shortage in other areas left a gap that the relatively cheap coal could fill. Coal allowed for industry and manufacturing to grow and produce profits greater than almost any other industry. Coal gained its popularity mainly because it had an economic value in that it provided energy in quantities and in locations that were unobtainable and unreachable for the other energy sources at the time. This start in England led to momentum in ta...
Buddhism is a religion that offers a spiritual path for transcending the suffering of existence. Samsara, the endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth to which all beings are subject, results from the consequences incurred by an individual’s karma, the sum of good and bad actions that accumulates over many lives. Release from this endless cycle is achieved only by attaining enlightenment, the goal for which Buddhists striv...
For in Octavia Butler’s novel, the poorest of the citizens are predominantly colored. Many of the squatters in the streets, or people migrating are of an ethnic minority or of mixed heritage. Therefore, one can conclude that this oppressive society is not strictly imposed onto Lauren’s ethnicity, but every other non-Anglo European citizen. One can argue that Butler’s world is progressing toward a neo-segregated America. Where slavery of the ethnic minority is returning, and the migration of colored citizens to the north has returned, harkening back to the period of reconstruction. This change back to a segregated society is arguably the opposite as to what is happening in Invisible
The loud beat thumps relentlessly. It is like a never-ending headache changing only with a mood, an arrangement, or a performer. The message of the song, in and of itself, is clear, but performers can change a song’s meaning without as much as the alteration of a single lyric. In 1966, Lee Dorsey released a song entitled, “Working in a Coal Mine.” Allen Toussaint wrote the lyrics and music. (Wikipedia-Working in a Coal Mine) The release of the song came at a time when America coal miners were enduring tremendous hardship in the coalmines of West Virginia. While it was not the intent of the songwriter to indicate any allegiance with the plight of coalminers, it found home with many of them. Some would eventually classify this as an anthem for the coalminer’s cause. The song sprouted branches in other musical genres where R&B roots ran deep. Specifically, these were Rock and Roll, and Country. The 1980’s ‘New Wave’ group, ‘Devo,’ (which stands for De-evolution) and the female Country duo, ‘The Judds’ created two of the most memorable performances to date. While genre most certainly plays a part in each presentation, gender, or a lack of, plays an equal role. On the one hand, ‘New Wave’ seeks androgyny; on the other, female country artists are not afraid to be seductively feminine. The presentations of ‘Working in a Coal Mine’ by both Devo and the Judd’s clearly demonstrate gender-influenced presentations of this classic R&B hit.
Objectives • To evaluate the difficulty of mining and reclamation To calculate costs, expenses, income, and profit from a hands-on mining exercise. • To evaluate the effectiveness of reclamation and its added costs to mining. To describe the increasing rarity of some non-renewable mineral resources. Introduction Minerals play an important role in our day-to-day life, but we often do not contemplate how the minerals are obtained. Minerals are scattered all over the world, just like any other resource.
Roughly 68 percent of the electricity generated in the United States of America is produced by fossil fuels. That includes petroleum, natural gases and coal. Although coal contributes around 37 percent to the factor, it is by far not the cleanest of them all. Some might argue that it is good for the economy because it is cheap and it creates jobs.. But the other side of the story portrays coal mining as a process that kills thousands of coal miners a year and that it practically destroys the environment around the mining with soot and air pollution. Mining now days is a big part of urbanization; due to how cheap the process is. There are different ways that coal mining is done. Mainly mountain top removal is done but there are many other
Coal has a very negative impact on the environment, one of the main impacts on the environment is the actual process of extracting the coal from the ground. The two ways that coal is mined, underground and surface, both have different effects on the environment. The first way that coal is mined is by digging tunnels and creating mineshafts underground and then removing the coal from th...
One of the first instructions of the Buddha is that we are all reborn. What realm we are born into when we are reincarnated, all depends on our ranks of good and bad karma each time we meet our demise. If you spend your life trying to spread peace, kindness and doing worthy deeds, you will end up with good karma and be reincarnated into a higher realm of the fortunate. If you cause chaos and pain in your life, by killing, stealing, hurting others or something along those lines, then you will be reincarnated into one of the unfortunate realms. The highest realm you can reach is the realm of man, which is the one and only realm in which you can achieve enlightenment. Buddha teaches that all living beings have souls due to reincarnation, because while some may be reincarnated into a human, others may be reborn as animals. Once you reach nirvana,...
Acid mine drainage refers to water (leachate, drainage or seepage) that has come into contact with oxidised rocks or overburden that contains sulphide material (coal, zinc, copper, lead). (Keller, 2000; U.S.G.S.; U.S.E.P.A., 2002). A common sulphide is pyrite, or iron disulfide (FeS2), and throughout this essay it will be pyrite that will be the primary sulphide considered. Acid mine drainage is not a new phenomenon, early mining techniques utilized gravity to avoid water pooling, resulting in the water becoming polluted by acid, iron, sulphur and aluminium (U.S.E.P.A., 2002). It is most commonly associated with coal mining, especially with soft coal, coal that has high sulphur content. The pyrite that is present in coal seams will be accessible after surface mining when the overlying surfaces are removed or in deep mines that allow oxygen access to the previously inaccessible pyrite-containing coal (D.E.P. 1, 1997). After pyrite is exposed to air and water, sulphuric acid and iron hydroxide are formed, creating an acidic runoff (D.E.P. 1, 1997; 2 2002).
Though it has had many negative impacts on the environment in the past, mining is a vital industry completely necessary to our economy and lives. Nearly every item we use or encounter in our day to day lives is mined or contains mined products. Without the excavation of such materials things like computers, televisions, large building structures, electricity, and cars would not be possible. Virtually every technological and medical advance uses minded materials, without which millions would suffer. Some examples of minerals in the home include the telephone which is made from as many as 42 different minerals, including aluminum, beryllium, coal, copper, gold, iron, silver, and talc. A television requires over 35 different minerals, and more than 30 minerals are needed to make a single personal computer. Without boron, copper, gold and quartz, your digital alarm clock would not work. Every American uses an average 47,000 pounds of newly mined materials each year, which is higher than all other countries with the exception of Japan, which is a staggering figure representative of our dependence and need for mined minerals. Coal makes up more than half of nation’s electricity, and will continue to be the largest electrical supplier into 2020 & accounting for some 95 percent of the nation's fossil energy reserves – nine of every ten short-tons of coal mined in the United States is used for electricity generation. As the population of the world grows more mineral resources must be exploited through mining in order to support the rising demand for such products. Though it may present a hazard to the environment and those physically located nears the mines, the materials extracted from mines...
Coal mining came along long before the industrial revolution had even commenced, it was an easy and well paid job until the coal, was pushed further down into the ground.
Mining is the process or industry of obtaining minerals from the earth. Topics in this paper I’ll be specifically discussing are pros and cons of mining, structures of a mine, mining in general, California gold rush, diamonds in Africa, and comparison of diamond and gold mines.
As a result of this process, the mine sites "do not develop normal soil structure or support the establishment of a plant cover". Many mine sites have...