Black-Lung Rule Loopholes Leave Miners Vulnerable
Thousands of coal miners continued to suffer and die from black lung during the 40 years that tough new limits on exposure to coal dust were supposed to provide protection.
Control of the mine dust was plagued by weak enforcement by regulators and loopholes exploited by mining companies, according to a joint investigation by NPR and the Center for Public Integrity (CPI). The protections were “set up for failure,” says Dennis O’Dell, the safety and health administrator at the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA).
As NPR and CPI reported Monday, a 1969 law slashed the legal limit for exposure to coal dust to as little as 1/4 of the amount many coal miners were breathing at the time. Although diagnoses soon plunged 90 percent, the decline didn’t last.
The Appalachia region between eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia and southwestern Virgina has seen a dramatic return of black lung.
In the mid-1990s, medical experts began noticing an increase in diagnoses, along with disease in younger miners and rapid progression to severe stages of sickness.
The trend is most acute in a triangular region of Appalachia that includes eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia and southwestern Virginia.