PITTSBURGH — Over the last decade, black lung disease has been on the rise among U.S. coal miners, particularly in Appalachia. On Aug. 24, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette described years of inaction by the Mine Safety and Health Administration in testing and monitoring deadly silica dust in the mines.
A rule to reduce silica dust levels, originally proposed by MSHA over a year earlier, has been postponed a number of times both by MSHA and because of a lawsuit filed by the National Mining Association and coal executives.
The United Mine Workers of America, United Steelworkers, and other unions and health organizations filed friend-of-the court briefs in favor of implementation of the rule.
Radiologist Brandon Crum told the Post-Gazette that he began to see sick workers at his Kentucky clinic at the end of 2013. In just 18 months he treated 60 miners with the most severe form of the disease, and the workers were younger.
“This isn’t your granddaddy’s black lung. It’s worse,” Amanda Lawson, a benefits counselor for Bluestone Health Center in Princeton, West Virginia, told the Militant. “Two weeks ago I sent off 10 X-rays of new miners for diagnosis. I just got them back yesterday, six have black lung.”
Called progressive massive fibrosis, this deadly form of the disease comes from exposure to silica dust, which is 20 times more toxic than coal dust. As bosses push to extract profit from thinning coal seams, miners must cut through ever-thicker layers of rock, releasing silica into the air and into their lungs. This form of the disease is hitting one in every five people who have worked in the mines in Appalachia for at least 25 years.
Revolution in the miners’ union
Not long ago, black lung had been virtually eliminated in the U.S. In the late 1960s, coal miners began a battle against the bosses that transformed the United Mine Workers of America into a powerful social force. They won a large measure of control over conditions in the mines, setting up union safety committees with the power to shut down production over safety. They also championed the establishment of health clinics throughout Appalachia. Cases of black lung declined more than 90% through the mid-1990s.
The story of this fight can be found in Pathfinder’s In Defense of the US Working Class, in a chapter entitled “The fighting history of the United Mine Workers,” taken from a program done by Radio Havana in Cuba.
But as profit-hungry coal bosses moved production to the West, weakening the union, they also went on the offensive in the remaining mines in Appalachia.
In response, members of the National Black Lung Association, the UMWA and others have long called for more stringent regulations. Feeling the pressure, the Mine Safety and Health Administration announced in April 2024 the new “silica rule” to cut in half the miners’ federally allowed limit of exposure to silica dust. The mine bosses sued, challenging the rule.
MSHA granted mine owners a year to adjust. But days before the April 2025 deadline, MSHA announced a four-month delay. Then in August, a federal judge extended the “pause” another two months, in a partial ruling in the case filed by the coal companies.
“The Department of Labor and MSHA should be fighting to implement this rule immediately, not kicking enforcement down the road yet again,” UMWA President Cecil Roberts said. “Every day they delay, more miners get sick, and more miners die. That’s the truth.”
Gary Hairston, president of the National Black Lung Association, told the Militant they are organizing their chapters to speak out to build support for implementing the rule.
“Time and again, MSHA inspectors found dangerous levels of dust spewing in the mines — conditions that can prompt a temporary shutdown of an underground workplace,” the Post-Gazette report said, “but failed to impose any penalties, only to find the companies violating the same thresholds again.”
The paper’s reporters pored over government statistics, concluding that “in the last five years, inspectors found that at nearly 200 mines — including some of the most active in the nation — the readings were at toxic levels.”
“MSHA had not conducted at least 1,509 mandatory inspections from fiscal years 2018 through 2021,” the report showed. “In 172 of those cases, it failed to perform any dust sampling.”
After nearly 28 years as a miner, Hairston was forced to stop working at age 48. Despite the obstacles thrown at him by the disease, he continues to fight for the prevention and safety all miners deserve.
Need for a new union fight
“The new silica rule would be good, but it has to be enforced, that’s the biggest thing,” he told the Militant. “It’s like the fox guarding the chicken coop. The coal companies don’t care, as long as they get their coal.”
Government regulations are never the answer to protecting the health and safety of working people. The government always rules for the bosses. To tackle the dangerous conditions in the coalfields requires what was done 50 years ago — building unions and union power. “I worked in a nonunion mine for a couple years,” Hairston said. His bosses ignored the requirement to hang a ventilation curtain, a standard safety measure to keep out hazardous gases and to provide fresh air. “They didn’t even hang the curtain until the inspector came!”
The gains won by the mighty battles fought by miners in the 1960s and ’70s have been gutted. But the fight to win them set an example that can be reconquered and more.
Labor resistance is on the uptick today, as reflected in the recent battle waged by flight attendants at Air Canada. They organized a militant fight to be paid for all their labor, including defying a government back-to-work order and in other strike actions. This bodes well for the future.