Coal Mining Mothers: The Cruel Science of Reproductive Health Research in the Coalfields, 1970-1995

Abstract

This thesis explores the process of producing knowledge about women’s reproductive health in the coalfields of Appalachia. In this study, I bring together the history of science, the environment, and reproduction to show how scientific knowledge about rare, contested health conditions such as pregnancy in coal miners is simultaneously essential and nearly impossible to produce. In three chapters, I trace histories of the Coal Employment Project, an organization of women coal miners, and the coal mining pregnancies they experienced at work. I draw on feminist STS methods of embodied knowledge production and environmental history methods of narrative storytelling by centering women’s stories and arguing for their potential to expand public health knowledge. Through my analysis of an uncompleted research study on pregnant coal miners, this research shows how the perceived incompatibility of qualitative information with quantitative epidemiological data prevents scientists and regulatory institutions from better understanding rare health conditions. I call this process “cruel science,” as it results in an absence of knowledge, unmet needs, and possible health consequences.