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Researchers Say They've Linked Silica Dust Directly To Severe Black Lung Disease

A new study links the epidemic of severe lung disease among coal miners to toxic silica dust. The findings echo a 2018 investigation by NPR and the PBS show Frontline.

Exposure to a toxic rock dust appears to be “the main driving force” behind a recent epidemic of severe black lung disease among coal miners, according to the findings of a new study. Lawmakers have debated and failed to adequately regulate the dust for decades.

The study, which examined the lungs of modern miners and compared them to miners who worked decades ago, provides the first evidence of its kind that silica dust is responsible for the rising tide of advanced disease, including among miners in Appalachia.

“This is the smoking gun,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Robert Cohen of the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. Cohen says that up to now there has been indirect evidence of the link, but his study went further – testing lung tissue samples for the concentration of silica particles.

“It turned out we were right. The pattern of pathology was very, very consistent with silica,” Cohen says.

Cohen’s study specifically looked at contemporary miners with severe disease, and what was lodged in their lungs, compared to older workers who also had severe lung disease.

Among their findings was that the more-contemporary workers – those born after 1930 – had more silica in their lungs than the miners who were born between 1910 and 1930.

Cohen’s work supports the findings of a joint investigation by NPR and the PBS show Frontline published in 2018.

NPR and Frontline found thousands of recent cases of the severe disease, known as complicated black lung or progressive massive fibrosis, in just five Appalachian states. Among them were miners in their 30s who experienced a rapid progression to advanced lung disease.

By analyzing decades of federal regulatory data, NPR and Frontline found thousands of instances where miners were working amid dangerous levels of silica. What’s more, the investigation found, federal regulators knew about excessive and toxic mine dust exposures but didn’t act – retaining an old regulatory standard for mining dust that doesn’t directly address silica.

Silica exposure comes from miners cutting into sandstone as they mine coal, which has become more common in recent decades as larger coal deposits were exhausted in Appalachia. As the mining machines operate, the quartz in the sandstone turns into sharp silica particles that are easily inhaled and can lodge in the lungs permanently.

Cohen and others are calling for the federal government to toughen Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) regulations on silica dust in mines.

United Mine Workers of America president Cecil E. Roberts tells NPR in a statement that the study “proves what we have already known, that silica is a leading cause behind the rise in cases of progressive massive fibrosis.

“I testified before Congress in 2019 on this exact issue and nothing was done,” Roberts says. “Now there is no excuse. MSHA needs to act to enforce a silica standard to protect today’s miners. Failure to act risks the lives of thousands.”

Shortly after President Biden took office, the Labor Department’s Inspector General said MSHA’s 50-year-old standard for regulating silica dust was “out of date” and difficult to enforce.

Mine regulators at MSHA have said they are studying a possible update to the regulation, which remains less stringent than the silica standard for other industries.

“I’ve heard good things from the Biden Administration,” Cohen says, “but we’d really want to push this through while we have good data and political motivation to do it.”

For its part, the National Mining Association, a trade association for mining companies and equipment makers, has argued that the amount of silica found in mine dust samples has decreased in recent years, and has urged regulators to allow mining companies to use personal protective equipment as a strategy to comply with any new silica standard.

Lawmakers, Union Urge Mine Safety Regulators To Act On Silica Dust

A group of Ohio Valley senators says a watchdog agency’s recent report shows that federal regulators must do more to protect coal miners from silica dust, an especially toxic form of dust created when mining equipment cuts into rock layers near coal seams.

In a Monday morning press release, six Democratic senators, including Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, called the findings in last week’s Inspector General’s report “extremely troubling,” saying the Mine Safety and Health Administration knew what it needed to do to lower miners’ exposure to deadly silica dust.

The senators’ pressure comes after the Department of Labor’s Office of the Inspector General found that MSHA’s standards for exposure to deadly silica dust were out of date, and that the mine safety agency’s sampling methods were too infrequent to guarantee that miners were protected.

“We are asking that you take immediate action to implement the recommendations contained in the OIG report,” the senators wrote in a jointly issued letter addressed to MSHA head David Zatezelo. “We further ask that you provide us with a thorough description of the measures currently being conducted by the agency to ensure that our brave and patriotic coal miners are shielded from excess exposure to silica dust on the job site.”

Zatezelo, a former mining executive, has been slow to act on a separate standard for silica exposure, and, in a response to the Inspector General’s report included in its appendix, said he could not agree with two of the IG’s three recommendations for improvements.

Silica is a component in the coal dust that is released in the mining process and is a major contributor to the ongoing black lung epidemic in coal country. The shocking surge in black lung cases was first revealed by NPR. Certain coal mining practices and a higher silica content in the rock surrounding Appalachian coal make miners in the region more likely to contract the progressive and deadly disease.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has found that as many as one in five experienced Appalachian coal miners has some form of black lung disease. Traditionally considered an older miner’s disease, a growing number of young miners suffer from black lung, as well.

Also Monday, United Mine Workers of America president Cecil Roberts issued a statement calling the Inspector General’s report quote “right on the money,” and said he looked forward to working with the Biden administration on the workplace protections.

Scientists, Mine Safety Officials Discuss Black Lung Protections

Officials with the Mine Safety and Health Administration met for the first time with miners’ health researchers Wednesday in a new partnership designed to discuss ways to better protect coal miners from the dust that causes black lung disease. In future meetings, representatives from the two agencies will discuss recommendations made by the National Academy of Sciences in a 2018 report on monitoring underground coal dust exposure. That report said the coal mining industry needs a “fundamental shift” in the way it controls exposure to coal and rock dust.

“A common theme that occurred throughout the National Academy recommandation is the need for an industry, labor, academia, manufacturers and government to work together on an investigation, training and solution related to respirable coal mine exposure,” said MSHA Director of Office of Standards, Regulations, and Variances Sheila McConnell. “This partnership comes directly from those recommendations.”

The meeting comes as researchers with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, continue to track epidemic-levels of black lung disease among coal miners; as many as one in five experienced Appalachian coal miners has some form of the disease. But collaboration between the scientists and the regulators has been tense. Scientists with NIOSH have been encouraging MSHA to regulate silica dust for almost 50 years, while MSHA has resisted those recommendations.

MSHA head David Zatezelo has been reluctant to embrace the science on silica’s toxicity, saying his agency would need to wait to determine the effects of a 2014 coal dust rule. That rule strengthened protections on overall coal dust exposure but did not specifically regulate dust from silica. That wait could last at least a decade.

“Due to the decades-long latency period between exposure and disease manifestation, a medically valid study cannot be completed in the near term,” Zatezelo told a Congressional panel in June. “But MSHA anticipates the study will confirm that dramatic increases in sampling and compliance translate into reduced black lung incidence going forward.”

NIOSH has continued to release research demonstrating more severe cases of black lung disease among younger miners and showing that miners at surface sites are also at risk of disease.