Some body parts on display - a coal miner's lung, a metastasized liver - look essentially like plastic models.

"Matewan" opens with the narrow beam of a miner's lamp and the labored efforts of a miner's lungs.

These particles emit alpha radiation, and once the particles became lodged in a miner's lungs, the radiation had the potential to alter the chromosomes of neighboring cells and initiate cancers.

The devices, connected to a small pump, mimic the action of a miner's lungs and are intended to be first line of defense against pneumoconiosis (pronounced new-MO-conee-osis), or black lung disease, a debilitating pulmonary injury.