The deadliest industry -- a close look a coal miners

The deadliest industry -- a close look a coal miners
We are bound to an economy on their backs
Melanie Light
San Francisco Chronicle

We Americans don't see the faces of these people or hear their voices in the kitchen when we flick on the light in the morning and start the coffee. But they are there nonetheless.

When we pull some "juice" from the wires, it has been supplied, about half the time, courtesy of the coal-mining communities. Whenever we pop a couple of aspirin, drive down a street, shine a flashlight or brush our teeth, we are using one of several thousand by-products generated by the coal economy. We are all inextricably bound to these coal-mining communities, and yet we all know so little about them.

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