Silica dust, which is thrown into the air during mining, has contributed to a staggering increase in cases of progressive, incurable and fatal black lung disease America’s Coal Miners. The treacherous particles are especially common in the seams of low-quality coal found in central Appalachia, yet for decades the Mine Safety and Health Administration, or MSHA, has pegged safe exposure levels at about twice what the government allows for every other occupation. On Tuesday, the agency finally announced an updated standard that outlines not only a new threshold for exposure, but also increased workplace safety measures and medical surveillance to protect workers.
“Miners deserve to go home safe and sound every day and should never have to choose between sacrificing their lungs and providing for their families,” MSHA director Chris Williamson said in a speech in Uniontown on Tuesday. , Pennsylvania, said. “Miners also deserve to retire in dignity and enjoy the fruits of their labor with their loved ones. That is why we are all here today to take a long overdue step forward in protecting miners from exposure to toxic silica dust.”
Williamson, along with representatives of the United Mineworkers of America and United Steelworkers, made the announcement, which miners and their advocates have fought for for years.
The need was urgent. Silica dust is toxic, and long-term exposure can cause a slow but fatal hardening of lung tissue progressive massive fibrosisor, as it is known among miners and their families, coal mining areas, black lung disease. The toxin is increasingly abundant in mine as companies lead thinner coal seams with larger impurities.
The arrange, spanning hundreds of pages, covers all miners, regardless of what they dig out of the earth, as well as anyone who works construction on mine sites. It tightens medical surveillance for black lung by making more frequent clinical visits available to workers free of charge, outlines measures for silica dust monitoring, and, most importantly, lowers the exposure standard to the same 50 micrograms long enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. — 50 micrograms of silica per cubic meter of dust during an eight-hour working day. It also outlined a renewed push for site compliance with tougher consequences, including, Williamson said, “citations, proposed penalties, immediate corrective actions, and if abatement does not occur within a reasonable period of time, withdrawal orders” that lead to closure of mines break the rule.
“Ultimately, this rule’s success will depend on its implementation and enforcement,” he said.
And that, some worry, is exactly where the effort could fail. The new regulations still allow mine operators to do their own sampling, a longtime source of grievance for miners and their advocates who simply don’t trust coal companies to accurately report silica levels.
“I’m pretty upset,” said Vonda Robinson, the vice president of the national Black Lung Association. Her husband John is 57 and succumbing to the disease; he was diagnosed 10 years ago, much younger than coal miners of previous generations. His doctor recommends a lung transplant, and he waits until the last possible moment because of the stress the operation puts on the body. Those with silicosis tend to live about five years after a transplant.
In the 14 years since MSHA proposed updating the silica dust standard, Robinson and the National Black Lung Association have lobbied and rallied tirelessly with lawmakers for improved enforcement. Although she feels the regulation announced Tuesday is a “good” rule, “if it’s not enforced, we’re going to be in the same boat we were in.”
Regulators allow mines to do their own monitoring because MSHA simply cannot afford to inspect every mine. To do this, the agency, which saw its budget peak in 1979, will years of budget cuts, and resulting staff shortages, seen during every presidential administration of this century. Even under the more labor-friendly Biden administration, MSHA saw a smaller than expected budget increases in last year’s annual appropriations bill. Mine deaths have too jumped – by 31 percent in fiscal 2023, when 42 workers died — due to accidents, an alarming increase that could indicate the agency is having trouble keeping up. The agency also tends to move slowly; it identified a cluster of black lung cases in the 1990s, but failed to act.
Robinson is also concerned about other weaknesses in the new regulation. It uses an eight-hour day as an average to estimate silica exposure, but most miners work 10- or 12-hour shifts. It also allows for just four MSHA silica dust inspections per mine per year, a rate that may not capture the true risk of exposure. Recently investigations by National Public Radio also revealed that the agency may have undercounted the number of black lung cases recorded in recent years because studies showing explosive growth have not yet been peer-reviewed.
Rebecca Shelton, the policy director at the Appalachian Citizens Law Center, has weighed in on the rule since its release. She is particularly concerned about coal companies’ continued control over testing, as the industry has had a history of cheat on results. Shelton said monthly mine testing by MSHA would be ideal because the amount of dust in the air can change depending on where in a mine the company operates, ventilation and other factors. The fact that federal enforcement requirements have barely changed, she said, indicates “a prioritization of the economics of the industry over the lives of miners.”
For people like Brandon Crum, a radiologist who X-rays black lung patients and sees the damage firsthand, the disease, and MSHA’s response to it, is personal. He worked the mines, the fourth generation in his family to do so. “It was a dusty job in dusty conditions,” he said.
Crum’s radiology office is in Pike County, Kentucky, on the border with West Virginia. He is one of the few radiologists certified to read chest X-rays for signs of black lung. After documenting early signs of the disease’s alarming and continuing rise, particularly among younger miners – those in their 30s and 40s who worked underground for as little as 10 years before becoming so ill they needed transplants or died . In 2016, he made a video with three young men advocating for federal action to address the crisis; one of them has since died and the other needs lung transplants.
Crum says the disease is cutting a wide swath through the region, affecting those who have it, those they know, and those who wonder if they might be next. He relayed his experiences in comments he made to the MSHA when the rule was in its draft stage last year. “I tried to give it a more personal touch,” he said. “It doesn’t just affect the men, but women and families and entire communities.”
The United Mine Workers of America supports the new rule, participates in its promotion and celebrates it as the fruit of many years of hard work, which continued even as union communications officer Erin Bates said coal companies refused to acknowledge the extent of the disease. The union went to Congress around them, knocked on doors and made calls for decades. She admits the regulation is not perfect, but is glad anything has been adopted at all. “Of course we want it to be better,” she said, “but no matter what, more health and safety is better for our miners.”
