These Men Thought They Were Digging a Tunnel. They Were Really Digging Their Own Graves.
Yahoo • • science
Key Points:
- In the early 1930s, workers at Hawk’s Nest in West Virginia blasted a tunnel through silica-rich rock to build a hydroelectric plant, unknowingly exposing themselves to deadly silica dust.
- Union Carbide, the company behind the project, was aware that the mountain was almost solid silica and intended to use 300,000 tons of it to produce ferrosilicon, a key alloy in steel manufacturing.
- Respirable crystalline silica dust, created by drilling and blasting, causes severe lung damage over time, leading to fatal respiratory diseases among the workers.
- Despite existing knowledge about the dangers of silica dust and methods to control it, Union Carbide failed to protect workers, resulting in one of America’s deadliest industrial disasters.
- The tragedy and subsequent cover-up by Union Carbide nearly erased this disaster from history, highlighting the company’s negligence and the suffering of the workers involved.