This article originally provided by Arabia Online

August 3, 2007

Are People Dying To Live Here?

Needless to say such factories create a lot of industrial waste in particulates released from smoke stacks and coal mines and waste material left over from the manufacturing process. Poultry and cattle farms also dominate the countryside producing massive amounts of manure waste for which there are no government regulations. Where does this stuff go? As I?m sure you?ve guessed large scale manufacturers and coal producers cut corners where ever possible. Coal producers themselves practice mountain-top removal in which they literally remove the top of a mountain to access coal beds. In other words they strip-mine an area, causing environmental degradation and the mountain itself to erode away from rainwater. In fact in February 26th, 1972 125 people died due to the irresponsible habits of coal mining companies when a sludge pond burst during heavy rains and washed down through Buffalo Creek, West Virginia. It decimated 16 communities and laid coal sludge along what was once beautiful Buffalo Creek.

Water pollution is an inevitable outcome of over-fertilization and chemical use on farms and yards, not to mention the manure from the poultry and cattle ranches. These excessive nutrients in the Potomac and it?s subsidiaries create algal and bacterial blooms, which deplete the water of oxygen and block sunlight. This in turn kills native fish and other species. All of these chemical residues will eventually wash into the oceans.

Environmental pollution is a major concern in West Virginia. While it is terrible for native wildlife it also creates dire situations for the people that live there. My family once farmed here in West Virginia, earning a living off the country side. We were robust hardworking citizens, providing our families with what we made from the land. In the 1920?s and 1930?s coal mining arrived here in earnest and my family soon found themselves living inside a coal camp in Boone County, West Virginia. Coal mining become the motto we lived by and the practice that made this state it?s money and kept us all in our homes. All seemed well for the next 60 years, despite watching the coal mines tear apart our beautiful mountains.

Then something happened. In 1991 came the biggest shock of our lives. My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, the very first case of cancer in our family ever. She struggled with this disease for 12 years before she succumbed. But it doesn?t stop there. In 1993 my grandfather? sister was diagnosed with skin cancer which metastasized to bone cancer and she died 1 year later. In 1995 and 1996 my Grandmother?s sister and mother?s sister were both diagnosed with breast cancer and continue to struggle with it today. In 1997 her husband, whose only life was coal mining was diagnosed with prostrate cancer. Then a cousin in 2001 was diagnosed with prostrate cancer as well. Turns out he was a preacher who never set foot in a coal mine. And the final blow this year, 2007, my grandfather was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

So you see a family, once a pillar of the community, has been knocked down by a disease that never existed before the coal mines moved into our county. And my family is just one of many facing these issues. I know many more now struggling with this disease.

Last year Discover Magazine reported a new mechanism in inheritance known as the epi-genome. This mechanism is inheritance that works outside of DNA. What I mean is that it is not the standard mode of inheritance we all learned in school, where sperm and egg come together and combine their genes. Epi-genome operates alongside our genetic material. You see everything that we eat, breath or otherwise take into our bodies affect the way our bodies operate. Vitamins and minerals give us the building blocks we need to keep ourselves healthy and strong. Our bodies also consume the chemicals that leak into the air and water from power plants, coal mines or even the products we use everyday, all of which are full of chemicals we know little to nothing about. Just like vitamins and minerals they affect our body?s function and not for the positive.

All of these things make up our epi-genome. These, minerals, vitamins and chemicals affect the way in which our genes express themselves. Sometimes things are turned off and sometimes things are turned on. This part of our biology is so little understood by scientists that they have no idea how everything affects our epi-genome. Now here?s the catch. We can pass our epi-genome to our children just like we do our genetic material and everything they do in their lives will alter it for better or worse. Then they pass it on. Sort of like passing around a rumor. Everyone hears it and everyone passes it on in a different way.

Simply put this newly discovered mechanism may explain why cancer could so suddenly appear in an ordinarily health family and then be passed down through generations. In West Virginia the pollution from coal mines and other factories have filled our bodies with toxic sludge and it truly saddens me to think that I may have passed this down to my children. It is my hope that someday my children can make this place better, anfd improve their own epi-genomes to pass on to their future children.

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