Mining coal has always been a risky business. Hazards range from losing profits to losing lives. In-between, the mining venture can find

Many of the dangers inherent in the operation of extracting coal have plagued the industry throughout its history. Even twenty-first century technology has not been able to eliminate the threat of mine disasters, or the collateral damages to animals, vegetables and atmosphere. The Office of Surface Mining gets a budget of $300 million per year to spend on Abandoned Mine Reclamation and Control of the Environmental Impacts of Surface Coal Mining.⁸ Polluted water, subsidence and mine fires are a few of the hazards confronting these federal agencies. In New Mexico, a gob fire at a site near Gallup has been burning for twenty-five years.

Part of the problem is this. When coal is disinterred and exposed to air, it mixes with hydrogen and oxygen in several dangerous combinations: CH₄, (methane), CO₂ (carbon dioxide) and CO, (carbon monoxide). All are odorless and virtually undetectable gasses that collect in pockets of dead air space.

Methane (a.k.a. coal gas, fire dampf or marsh gas) is highly explosive when it reaches a level of 1 volume of methane to 9.4 volumes of air. In these stochiometric proportions, all the carbon and hydrogen ignite a wall of fire that moves toward daylight at several meters per second. Pressures measured at over thirty atmospheres have been recorded. "…the entire coal face may be blown into the mine workings, pulverized to a fine dust. Such gas explosions are so violent that mine entries are completely filled with the gases, which press back the ventilation current and issue from the shaft."¹  

Carbon dioxide, introduced with air when a coal bed is excavated, CO₂ can be absorbed in microscopic fissures and condense in proportion to gas pressure. When released, it expands rapidly enough to freeze the coal discharged with it, and billows up into a cloud of dry ice that hangs above the mine shaft for days.Carbon monoxide, (tailpipe suicide gas), is deadly in much smaller quantities than methane. It only takes 0.35% mixed with air to kill a canary, and 0.4% take human life.