Appalachia is the most medically fragile place in our country, and it’s all manmade and preventable. Silica and heavy metals such as lead, arsenic, mercury, and selenium fill the air, water and land from daily blasting tops of mountains into dust. Disease and birth defeats are on the rise and in the coming decades will soar astronomically.

The staggering cost of poverty and chronic disease is a burden shared by every state through Federal taxes. West Virginia is repeatedly the poorest state in the nation, lowest life expectancy, second in depression, tenth in suicide, and second in children’s respiratory disease.

Cancer rests on a three legged stool of stress, environmental toxins, and malnutrition. Appalachia is the Chernobyl of the United States. One day Congress will hold hearings on how and why this genocide was perpetrated on a segment of our people but it will not save the thousands of victims of Mountaintop Removal.