Word: mineral
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...Many miners lose an eye, and many more lose fingers; the Mining Enforcement and Safety Administration estimates that three out of every five miners who have been in the pits for 20 years or more have lost a finger in a conveyor belt or some other machinery. In addition, 215,000 miners are disabled by black-lung disease, caused by breathing coal dust. Says Miller: "A miner who gets black lung gives up ten or 15 years of his life. And it's a helluva way to go. It took my stepfather five years...
Eerie Digs. The dangers that miners face routinely each day would be considered harrowing by most American workers. At the Shoemaker Mine near Benwood, W. Va., for example, a miner's day begins at the bathhouse, a big stark room with showers. Miners' work pants, boots, jackets and gloves are in buckets hung from the high ceiling on ropes that look like stalactites. After changing, the men hang their numbered brass tags on a board at the mine entrance; a tag that is still there after the shift ends alerts the rest of the crew that a miner...
...near the mine face, visibility diminishes, and the air thickens with black dust. The miners begin to clear their throats and spit. The area around the mine face looks like a small construction site, with piles of boards, bolts, rails, ties and electrical power equipment. The wires on this equipment are regularly checked lest a miner be electrocuted. Facing the wall of coal is a continuous coal mining machine called "the beast." The machine's whirling blades chew into the seam with a roaring noise like an avalanche, spewing chunks of coal back into waiting coal cars, which...
...holes for the bolts is one of the most dangerous jobs in mining because the unsupported roof can easily give way. When the supports are up, the mining machine goes back to work, and the process is repeated over and over until the shift ends. For all the hazards, miners insist that there is a great deal of satisfaction in coal mining. Says Miller, a third-generation miner: "There are always going to be dangers. After a couple of years, you learn to accept the realities of mining...
...their small communities, miners generally do not live as well as auto workers or steelworkers, but they have begun to enjoy more of the amenities of middle class life. Bob Wingrove, 49, a miner for 27 years and the popular president of the U.M.W. local at the Ireland mine near Moundsville, speeds to work in a sports car, returns each evening to his modest frame house, which he is renovating. On days off, he drives to Pittsburgh, 90 minutes away on Interstate 79, for concerts or sporting events...