A human takes on average 20,000 breaths per day. Imagine each breath heavy and tight from a career underground working a seam for coal or valuable minerals, a constant reminder of what you sacrificed for your family’s well-being.
“I worked in the coal mine for 27 and a half years,” Gary Hairston, the National Black Lung Association’s president said. “I come out at 48 [years old] with black lung.”
Since leaving the mines, he has been advocating for miners’ rights and safe working conditions.
“I’m worried about young coal miners,” Hairston said. “I don’t want [them] to be like I am.”
The nation’s top health officials have urged the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), the federal agency in charge of mine safety, to adopt strict rules to protect miners from rock dust.
Black lung and silicosis are both forms of pneumoconiosis, a condition where inflammation and scarring make it hard for the lungs to get enough oxygen. It is incurable but steps can be taken to slow the disease and improve quality of life.
Black lung diagnoses doubled in the last decade. Advanced disease has quadrupled since the 1980s in Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky.
In recent decades, cases have risen further as miners dig through more rock layers to get to less accessible coal, generating deadly silica dust in the process.
“What’s happening is a lot of these mines, especially in Appalachia have been mined for hundreds of years decades and they are now mining rock, and so it’s this constant hitting of rock from these machines that is causing an increase of silica dust in these mines,” said Erin Bates, director of communications for the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA).
Respirable crystalline silica is a carcinogen. It can cause lung disease, silicosis, lung cancer, progressive massive fibrosis and kidney disease. Coal dust containing silica dust has been shown to increase the severity of black lung cases and affect miners even as early as their 30s and 40s.
Mine operators are supposed to ventilate mine work areas to lower the concentration of coal and rock dust, as well as methane.
But how much silica dust is too much? For years, MSHA set an upper limit of 100 micrograms per cubic meter averaged over an eight-hour shift.
But after years of pressure from advocates like Hairston, it cut that in half, to 50 micrograms per cubic meter.
Mine operators have a legal requirement to maintain safe levels of exposure in the mines at all times. Under the new rule, if levels are too high, mine operators must take immediate corrective action to lower the concentration of respirable dust to at, or below, the respirable dust standard and contact MSHA, according to Assistant Secretary Chris Williamson.
“That was one of the new provisions in the final rule, that the mine operator will have to notify MSHA, because we want to know that too. They have to take immediate corrective action,” Williamson said. “And resample to be able to verify, did that corrective action address the issue?”
Under the new rule, when respirable silica dust levels go above the 50-microgram limit, mine operators must provide miners with respirators and ensure they are worn until exposure levels are safe.
The use of respirators when levels are high is part of the rule that many advocates and miners say doesn’t go far enough.
“We truly believe that instead of requiring a miner to wear a respirator, they should shut that mine down and improve the ventilation in that mine, so that there is not any extreme case of silica dust exposure in that area,” Bates said.
The new, stricter safety rules went into effect in June, although coal producers have 12 months to comply.
Advocates like Vonda Robinson, the vice president of the National Black Lung Association, celebrated the new rule.
“I think with this new ruling, I think it’s going to be great for the coal, the coal mines, and also the coal miners,” Robinson said.
As a retired miner, Hairston won’t benefit from the new safety measures, but he’s worked tirelessly to push it through, visiting Capitol Hill to testify about working conditions in the mines.
“The rule is pretty good,” Hairston said. “There’s a lot of stuff we got put in, it is good. The thing is, is the defunding.”
In July, the U.S. House Appropriations Committee passed a spending bill for the federal Department of Labor that includes a line preventing any funds from being used to implement the new rule.
“To cut the funding from MSHA, an organization that already has very limited funding in the first place, is a travesty to all miners out there,” Bates said.
According to Policy and Advocacy Associate with the Appalachian Citizens Law Center, Brendan Muckian-Bates, MSHA’s Coal Mine Safety and Enforcement program has already lost about half its staff over the last decade.
“One of the challenges that MSHA faces is they’ve never been funded at the appropriate level, the level that they have requested of Congress,” Muckian-Bates said. “In fiscal year 2023 for example, the agency requested over $423 million, and that year received just shy of $388 million. And this is a real challenge that the agency has, because with the new silica dust rule, certainly there will be a need for more mine safety and health inspectors, who are already overworked, who already have to travel and conduct appropriate inspections and make sure, obviously, that the health and safety of miners is taken care of.”
Sam Petsonk is an Oak Hill-based lawyer who practices employment law and represents miners seeking black lung benefits. He said the rule would benefit the coal industry and coal mining by saving money and lives.
“The silica rule is 30 years overdue, and this administration has implemented it, and the Republicans in Congress are trying to repeal that new rule legislatively, by defunding the agency,” Petsonk said.
Some miners and their advocates are also dubious about relying on mine operators to tell MSHA about increases in dangerous dust.
“Our concern is that, if left to their own devices, operators will find another way, another loophole around this silica dust rule, and miners will continue to be exposed to dangerous levels of silica dust,” Muckian-Bates said.
But Williamson said he’s already heard from mine operators who, because of the new rule, are evaluating their mines to get ahead of things.
“We’re moving full steam ahead to implement this rule,” Williamson said. “So unless there’s, you know, a law that’s passed that tells me that I cannot do that, or there’s a court that, you know, put something in place, like an injunction, or issues an injunction that says I can’t, we’re moving full steam ahead. And we’ve asked everybody in the mining community, labor industry, everybody to come together and really do what’s right, and all of us to focus on protecting, you know, miners’ health.”
Since the fate of the new rule is now in the hands of the U.S. Congress, West Virginia Public Broadcasting reached out to all the state’s federal lawmakers to learn where they stand.
Replying by email, Sen. Joe Manchin’s office said they could not say anything on the record about the new rule or its implementation.
Also by email, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said, “The safety of miners’ health is paramount,” and noted that the Senate version of the bill would actually increase funding for MSHA, not cut it, like the House version.
Representatives Carol Miller and Alex Mooney did not respond to our request for comment.
“I have full confidence that the Senate Democratic Caucus will prevent the Republicans from blocking this new silica rule,” Petsonk said. “But you know, if control of the Senate changes in the next year, this rule may be in jeopardy.”
Editor’s Note: This story is part of a series we’re calling “Public Health, Public Trust,” running through August. It is a collaboration with the Global Health Reporting Center and is supported by the Pulitzer Center.