"A door to door survey of 769 adults found that the cancer rate was twice as high in a community exposed to mountaintop removal mining compared to a non-mining control community," said Dr. Michael Hendryx, lead author of the study and Associate Professor at Department of Community Medicine, and Director of West Virginia Rural Health Research Center at West Virginia University.

"The study adds to the growing evidence that mountaintop mining environments are harmful to human health," added Hendryx.

Among the 1.2 million American citizens living in mountaintop removal mining counties in central Appalachia, an additional 60,000 cases of cancer are directly linked to the federally sanctioned strip-mining practice.

Appalachian leaders went to Washington, DC to deliver the new study and call on President Obama, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, and Attorney General Eric Holder to put an immediate moratorium on mountaintop removal in West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. The moratorium would be until federal regulatory agencies make a complete assessment of the spiraling health crisis related to mountaintop removal mining.