Trump administration halts research on mountaintop coal mining's health effects

Donald Trump’s Department of the Interior has told the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to stop studying the effects of coal mining on health.A branch of the interior department – the office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement – was funding an inquiry into the potential correlation between increased human health risks and living near surface coal mine sites in Central Appalachia.Coal mining in Central Appalachia, where the committee’s wor