Coal Kills.

Forget air pollution. Forget water contamination. Coal mining kills more than 5,000 people a year in China alone, and more elsewhere.

Anxious relatives demanded to be allowed into a coal mine today after an explosion killed at least 134 miners and left 15 others missing, adding to a soaring death toll in China's mines despite a safety crackdown.

The blast in the Dongfeng Coal Mine prompted national leaders to demand stricter enforcement of safety rules in China's mining industry, by far the world's deadliest, with more than 5,000 fatalities a year in fires, floods and other accidents.

If nuclear power were anywhere close to being as dangerous as coal mining, there wouldn't be a single nuclear power plant in the United States.