Vol. 76/No. 28      July 30, 2012

The coal mine bosses’ drive to ramp up production and cut corners on safety is responsible for the increase. And the government’s Mine Safety and Health Administration, which is concerned more with the coal industry’s profits than workers’ lives, is complicit.

A recent joint investigation by National Public Radio and the Center for Public Integrity describes aspects of this development.

From 1968 through 2007, black lung caused 75,000 deaths nationwide, according to government data.

In 1969, a three-week strike by tens of thousands of miners in West Virginia shut down coal production in that state. The strike was a key factor leading to passage of the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act.

The act set up a benefits program for those with the disease and established stricter standards for coal dust exposure, lowering the permissible concentrations to about one-quarter of what miners were being exposed to at the time.

Diagnosed incidents of black lung plunged more than 90 percent, according to National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health data. But by the mid-1990s this trend reversed, with younger miners in their 30s, 40s and early 50s getting the disease.

“Prevalence of the most severe form of black lung has tripled between the 1980s and the 2000s and has almost reached the levels of the 1970s,” reported the Charleston Gazette.

Figures from NIOSH indicate black lung cases are among the highest in the central Appalachian region. In Kentucky 9 percent of miners were diagnosed with the disease between 2005 and 2009.

Between 2000 and 2011, MSHA issued small numbers of coal mine dust violations despite the thousands of samples submitted to the agency exceeding “acceptable” government limits. “MSHA data show that 53,000 valid samples contained more dust than standards permit but the agency issued less than 2,400 violations,” reported NPR.

Mining companies are often allowed to do their own sampling and reporting of dust levels, and they have ample ways to distort data on the condition of the air miners are forced to breathe. Federal law permits sampling at only 50 percent of average production, when miners have as little as half the exposure. Sampling is required only eight hours a day even though many miners today work at least 10 hours.
 
 
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