Black Lung makes a comeback

Headline Charleston WV
More Coal Miners Developing Black Lung according to a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) expert's testimony to a WV legislative committee.

Delegate Mike Caputo, D-Marion, says the rise in black lung cases is also being seen here at home. Caputo says a number of factors could be contributing to the increase.

"The bottom line is people are dying," Caputo said after the meeting. "Young miners are contracting black lung at a more alarming rate then ever before. And as the government, I think we need to take a hard look at that."

For those too young to remember Black Lung it is coal workers' pneumoconiosis (CWP).  Black Lung's hallmark was the image of a black lung on an X-ray film.  It is the reason so many miners get disability insurance and one of the problems MSHA (Mine Safety and Health Administration) and NIOSH link were formed to forestall.  

In the years since the federal government has regulated dust levels in coal mines, the number of cases of black lung disease has fallen sharply. Since the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, average dust levels have fallen from 8.0 mg. per cubic meter to the current standard of 2.0 mg. per cubic meter. The 1969 law also set up a black lung disability benefits program to compensate coal miners who have been disabled by on-the-job dust exposure.

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More dust, more Black Lung.  There is no cure for Black Lung, but there is prevention.  This includes adequate ventillation in mines, protective air filters and regular health monitoring.  What could be the cause?  

Longer working hours and low seams of coal might explain a dramatic upswing in black lung among southern West Virginia miners, a federal official suggested Tuesday.

In the first leg of renewed research, Dr. Lee Petsonk, chief medical officer for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, tested miners in Raleigh and Mercer counties, learning the incidence of pneumoconiosis was twice the national average.

"These people, I don’t know how they’re working," he told the House Select Committee on Mine Safety while displaying a slide of one diseased miner’s lung.

"It’s one of the more severe cases to still be alive."

What is even more puzzling is that miners are contracting deadly black lung at a younger age, meaning workers who start a career in the industry at 18 show evidence of it in their 30s, the physician told the panel.

Research performed in eastern Kentucky and western Virginia revealed almost identical results, he said.

However, the average in Alabama, Illinois and Utah was about 2 percent, below the national trend, Petsonk said.

"And they’re mining coal there, too," he told the committee. "Plenty of it."

Back in 1970, about 36 percent of the industry’s work force came down with the scourge, but the number dipped to 7 percent in 1995. Now, it has shot back up to 13 percent, he said, grabbing the attention of the experts at NIOSH.

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The state of WV is on this, asking for more detailed reports by January.  Hopefully we will be quicker to recognize the problem than in the 1960s, when as many as 36% of miners in WV had Black Lung.  

Another human cost of coal mining and paying the true cost of coal.  We would be haiving more renewable energy if we did.