Two days after the conference concluded, another miner was killed in West Virginia. With two months to go, 2006 is already the deadliest year in U.S. coal mines since 1995, with 43 fatalities.

John Stewart, the outgoing president of the BLA, opened its annual meeting by asking: “Why is black lung on the rise?” Stewart said the reason is lack of enforcement of existing laws by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) and more nonunion mines opening up.

“Conditions have worsened with more coal dust and less air. This is what miners are reporting to us,” said Debbie Johnson from the Bluestone Clinic in Princeton, West Virginia. “We see the results in the X-rays. Younger miners with less time having positive X-rays and a few having complicated cases of black lung.”

The disease, also known as pneumoconiosis, is a preventable illness. Water spraying and proper ventilation can greatly diminish the levels of respirable dust.

A study conducted between 1996 and 2002 by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) revealed increasing black lung cases in younger miners. The NIOSH report said that “severe and rapidly progressive cases of the disease continue to occur among young miners. Cases of rapidly progressive coal workers’ pneumoconiosis appear to be clustered in eastern Kentucky and western Virginia.”

A follow-up NIOSH survey of 328 underground coal miners in March and May of this year in Lee and Wise counties in Virginia confirmed this trend. Nine percent or 30 of these miners had X-ray evidence of black lung, and 11 of the 30 were advanced cases. According to NIOSH, “advanced cases are likely to result in respiratory disability and premature death.” The study says the current dust limit may be too high and that there could be an underestimation of the actual dust exposures. Coal companies have been responsible for coal-dust sampling and miners often point out that the bosses don’t enforce existing standards.

Silica (rock dust) can also contribute to getting advanced black lung. “A young miner with black lung reported mining through rolls and rolls of rock,” said Sparkle Bonds of the Virginia BLA.

Many of those at the meeting here also discussed the lengthy and complicated process of obtaining black lung benefits. Stewart said that only between 8 percent and 12 percent of miners with black lung who apply receive benefits. “Miners don’t have to be in their death beds to receive black lung benefits,” said Stewart.

BLA representatives came from Kentucky, Illinois, Virginia, West Virginia, and Alabama. Others present included black lung clinic workers and representatives from the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA).

Meanwhile, the UMWA organized a protest October 24 of some 70 coal miners and UMWA officials at a meeting of MSHA officials in Morgantown, West Virginia. Following two recent deaths of coal miners in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, the miners came to protest the quality of oxygen units, the self-contained self-rescuers that miners carry on their belts, and to demand more mine inspectors.

The 43rd U.S. miner killed this year died in West Virginia five days after that protest. The miner, whose name was not released, was crushed by a shuttle car, which is used to haul coal from the mining machine to a conveyor belt, as he and a mechanic were attempting to repair it October 30 at Bluestone Coal’s Double Bonus No. 65 Mine in Wyoming County, West Virginia. The mechanic was injured in the shoulder and chest. The mine, which is organized by the UMWA, employs 71 people.

Tony Lane, a coal miner in Pennsylvania, contributed to this article.
 
 
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