While deaths and injuries due to accidents in coal mining are still way too high in the US, disease and death due to respiratory disease still dominates.

Australia has almost eliminated black lung disease, but it's on the rise in the US, killing almost 1,000 US miners per year, more in China, and undetermined numbers in countries without statistics (Ukraine).
Karen Street | Homepage | 11.28.06 - 1:31 pm | #

I tried reviewing that mining data and got exactly zero change on a linear fit to operator employee deaths per 1000 employees in 1993 to 2006 (when I generously assumed only 6 more deaths in 2006 Q4).

An excellent point from Karen (and a good article too). These are exactly the kind of longer-term effects that people get so caught up about for nuclear power... and there is absolutely nothing of concern for nuclear compared to the known problems of coal, which extends further than black-lung and into generalised air pollution issues killing more thousands not involved in the industry.
Jon Wharf | 11.28.06 - 2:05 pm | #

Emissions from coal plants kill 20,000 americans each year, see

http://www.cleartheair.org/dirty...cs/ dirtyAir.pdf

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WFH | 12.06.06 - 8:15 pm | #