The True Story of the Canary in the Coal Mine
Coal mining became a vital and deadly industry with the industrial revolution. Workers faced unforgiving conditions with cave-ins, explosions, and carbon monoxide poisoning as common hazards.
Carbon monoxide, responsible for both poisoning workers and causing explosions, proved difficult to detect due to the colorless and odorless nature of the gas.
Enter Physiologist John Haldane, who proposed the use of birds as early warning signals. Birds can fly at high altitudes because of their ability to absorb oxygen while inhaling and exhaling. However, this double-dose of oxygen also makes birds highly susceptible to airborne poisons.
Haldane’s idea was a god-send for coal miners. When a canary fainted from carbon monoxide poisoning, the miners knew to leave the mine. And the bird was, hopefully, revived.
By 1911, canaries became regulation for British coal miners. Miners were required to carry two caged birds into the mine upon each descent.
They took to treating the canaries like pets. A kinship developed with the creatures, whose singing lifted the miner's spirits.
The practice was replaced in 1986 with modern technology by the British Coal Industry. And the miners felt a sense of loss.
Even in 1996, when legislation required miners to replace canaries with electronic sensors, the miners continued to argue that canaries are safer because “batteries can fail – canaries don’t.”
In our culture, “the canary in the coal mine” represents an early warning of imminent danger that has become a cliche. Yet both the cliche and true story steal the canary’s life for a worldy purpose.
Who are the canaries in our world? Are they not countless — the number of people forced to acquiesce to unwell situations in order to survive?
Were the coal miners themselves — subjected to impossibly harsh working conditions at laughable wages and worked to their limit for constant fuel supply — not also canaries, supporting families many never got to see grow?
Every canary who continues to sing is a miracle. But we — the people of this world — are worth more than fulfilling a purpose someone else has determined.
We will not be companions to the coal mine.
We will leave the ancient earth where it rests and go be birds in the sky.