Send Prayers for Coal Miners in China, the Ukraine and Elsewhere.
A book called Coal Mountain Elementary about the human cost of the coal mining brought me to tears more than once, and sent me on an oddyssey to find out more about the pain caused by unsafe coal mining conditions around the world. I could not find any good systematic coal mine death statistics (how cold those words sound, refering to the flesh and blood humans who continue to die in horrifying numbers). The numbers I share here are drawn from many different sources and provides a reasonably complete picture of the human price, past and present of underground mining for coal. Please join me in sending your prayers to those who have lost loved ones in mining accidents in Australia, France, India, Japan, Poland, the United Kingdom, the United States where thousands of coal miners have lost their lives since records have been kept. And special prayers for miners and their families in the Ukraine where since the 1990s coal mine fatalities have averaged more than 300 a year. And words fail when we consider China where according to official statistics, more than 250,000 coal miners have died in mining accidents since the inception of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Since 2000 official coal mine death numbers, mostly migrant peasants from rural areas, have ranged from >3200 to 7200 each year. The actual death toll is considered by knowledgeable people to be two or three times higher than that. Mark Nowak, author of Coal Mountain Elementary regularly posts news of recent mine disasters: Coal Mountain Mine Disasters
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