Harry Wiley sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last month in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia.
On Wednesday, his attorneys sought a preliminary injunction from Judge Irene Berger. If she grants it, HHS would have to bring back a team that monitors coal miners for black lung disease.
HHS put those workers on administrative leave last month and gave them termination notices.
Wiley, meanwhile, can’t be approved for a job transfer that would limit his exposure to dust that could make his black lung worse.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Fred Westfall said the miner health monitoring program would resume under a new agency called the Administration for a Healthy America.
Westfall presented as evidence a March press release and a fact sheet that mentioned the agency, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
Wiley’s attorneys pointed out that the documents didn’t mention the Coal Workers Health Surveillance Program, which falls under the NIOSH umbrella.
Multiple witnesses testified that there was no evidence of a plan to resume the program.
NIOSH processes applications for the Part 90 program, which allows miners diagnosed with black lung to request a transfer to a less dusty part of the operation.
Following his diagnosis, Wiles applied for a Part 90 transfer.
“We know that intervention works,” testified Scott Laney, an epidemiologist at NIOSH who’s based at the agency’s Morgantown office.
Laney said he was called back to work last week, only to be placed on administrative leave again this week.
The disease can’t be cured, but it can be mitigated. Less dust exposure can slow the progression of the disease and prolong miners’ lives, Laney said.
“That’s been very clear in the scientific research,” he said.
But since HHS effectively shut down the program in April, none of that research has continued, and processing of Part 90 applications has ceased.
Laney and other experts testified that no one else in the world does the kind of work they do.
He said no one has custody of records and specimens and there is no succession plan. Laney said he’s considered taking another job.
“I have a family, and I can’t keep doing this,” he testified.
Anita Wolf, a public health analyst for the Respiratory Health Division at NIOSH, retired in 2020 after 20 years as coordinator of the Coal Worker Health Surveillance Program.
Wolf, who continues to consult for NIOSH, said some coal miners she examined were so sick they had to be carried into the agency’s mobile lab to be examined.
Mobile screenings and other functions of the health surveillance team have stopped, Wolf said.
It’s also personal for Wolf, she testified. Her father was a coal miner, and he died of black lung.
“I watched my father die from this,” she said. “It’s not a pretty sight.”
