Black Lung Rates Doubled in Past Five Years

by Mike Hall, Sep 14, 2007

During the past five years, the rate of deadly black lung disease in coal miners has doubled, a new study from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) finds. The Mine Workers (UMWA) union says the news is “shocking and disturbing.”

Says UMWA President Cecil Roberts:

Black lung is a preventable disease that was supposed to be on the way out after the passage of the 1969 Mine Safety and Health Act. That act contained a respirable dust standard that all the experts said would be low enough to prevent miners from getting this horrible disease. But now what we’re seeing is a trend upward in the prevalence of the disease among miners who began working in the industry after that act was passed.

The NIOSH figures show that some 9 percent of miners, with 25 years of experience, examined in 2005 and 2006 had developed black lung, compared with 4 percent 10 years earlier. With coal miners who had between 20-24 years in the mines, the rate jumped from 2.5 percent with black lung 10 years ago to nearly 6 percent.

Black lung disease, also called pneumoconiosis, is caused by breathing in coal dust. It slowly robs victims of their ability to breath. Roberts says the spike in the black lung rate is happening because:

Either the respirable dust standard is not being enforced by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), or the standard is still too high. It’s likely to be the result of a combination of both factors.

The respirable dust standard—the maximum amount of coal dust allowed in a mine’s atmosphere—was set at 2 milligrams per cubic foot under the 1969 mine law. That was believed low enough to eventually eliminate the disease—and the incidence of black lung rates did bottom out in 1999 before beginning to rise again, according to the NIOSH study.

“This data is extremely alarming,” says Dr. Robert Cohen, medical director of the National Coalition of Black Lung and Respiratory Disease Clinics, where the findings were presented this week.

There is other troubling black lung data from the U.S. Department of Labor, Cohen says, showing that more than 400 miners, since 2001, who did not begin work in the mines until after the dust level was reduced have developed the most progressive form of the disease.

Clearly something is wrong with the control of respirable coal mine dust in our nation’s mines. Given the lag time between exposure and discovery of disease, these findings are likely to be just the tip of the iceberg. We should not be seeing this prevalence rate or this type of advanced disease in the 21st century.

Legislation introduced earlier this year to strengthen mine safety and health rules calls for cutting the allowed coal dust level in half, to 1 milligram per cubic foot. Roberts says:

We know that when tough laws are stringently enforced, health and safety gets better. When they aren’t, we begin to see patterns like we’re seeing today. This new data only serves to heighten our concerns about what kind of job MSHA has been and is doing to keep miners safe and healthy on the job.

MSHA has been under growing scrutiny following a series of fatal disasters, beginning with the death of 12 miners in the Sago Mine in Upshur County, W.V. on Jan. 2, 2006. At a recent Senate panel hearing probing the agency’s actions, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) asked MSHA chief Richard Stickler:

What is the problem at MSHA? What the hell is the problem at MSHA?

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