By Tanner Garrity There was a physician in 19th-century Poland who noticed that the local miners were surprisingly healthy. Most miners at the time had an abysmal life expectancy (that hasn’t changed much nearly 200 years later), and suffered from conditions like pneumoconiosis, occupational dermatitis and silicosis. The unluckiest of the lot died of lung cancer. But in this particular village, the miners didn’t have respiratory issues. They might as well have been heading off to a bakery each day, not working a few hundred feet below ground. The key, the doctor concluded, was the type of mine…

Read More