appalachian voices

At 9:00 am sharp on August 10, a small phalanx of smiling, well-coiffed elderly women began herding a crowd of several dozen people into the auditorium of the National Mine Health and Safety Academy in Beckley, West Virginia. Among the crowd were former coal miners and their spouses, lawyers, pulmonologists, black lung clinic staff, environmental activists, local media, union representatives, and concerned citizens—all there to attend a public hearing for a new proposed rule from the Mine Safety and Health Administration, or MSHA, that seeks to limit silica exposure in the nation’s coal mines to 50 micrograms per cubic meter, down from 100.

I was there too, both to document the proceedings and offer my own brief testimony. I have been following this rule’s progression since I began reporting on the black lung epidemic last year, and was thrilled to see it finally enter the public comment portion. As I found in my recent investigation for In These Times, black lung now afflicts more than 1 in 8 coal miners in Kentucky and West Virginia who have been working underground for 20-24 years, up from one in 30 a decade ago. Younger miners—those who have spent only 15-19 years underground—are becoming sicker with pulmonary massive fibrosis, the most severe form of the disease. As I wrote then, workers in their 30s and 40s are now making their way to the same black lung clinics that served their parents and grandparents, and fighting the same battles against red tape and corporate malfeasance to win black lung benefits. And it is all completely preventable.