Independent auditing arm of Congress says tougher coal-dust limits sound, would reduce black lung

The Obama administration used appropriate scientific studies and analysis when it proposed tightening limits on coal dust to fight a resurgence of deadly black-lung disease, says a federal government audit made public Friday. The review, mandated by Congress and done by its Government Accountability Office, supported the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration proposal and dismissed industry complaints that challenged MSHA's evidence and methodology. (MSHA photo)

In its 24-page report, the GAO said key scientific studies support MSHA's conclusion that tightening the dust limit would reduce miners' risk of getting black lung: "Our evaluation of the reports MSHA used to support its proposal and the key scientific studies on which the reports were based shows that they support the conclusion that lowering the PEL [permissible exposure limit] from 2.0 mg/m3 to 1.0 mg/m3 would reduce miners’ risk of disease. The reports and key studies concluded that miners’ cumulative exposure to coal mine dust at the current PEL over their working lives places them at an increased risk of developing progressive massive fibrosis, and decreased lung function, among other adverse health outcomes. . . . To mitigate the limitations and biases in the data, the researchers took reasonable steps, such as using multiple x-ray specialists to reduce the risk of misclassifying disease and making adjustments to coal mine dust samples where bias was suspected.

The report also says "Researchers used appropriate analytical methods to conclude that lowering the existing PEL would decrease miners’ risk of developing black lung disease. For example, in addition to taking steps to precisely estimate a miner’s cumulative exposure, the researchers accounted for several factors in their analyses—such as the age of the miners, the carbon content of the coal (coal rank), and other factors known to be associated with the disease—to better estimate the effect of cumulative exposure to coal-mine dust."

Completion of the GAO report frees MSHA to finalize the rule, but agency officials last week offered no timeline for when they would do so, reports Ken Ward Jr. of The Charleston Gazette. Read the report here.

Republican appropriators, including chair from coalfield, try to block new rules aimed at black lung

The House Appropriations Committee passed a spending bill yesterday with a provision that would prohibit the Mine Safety and Health Administration from issuing or enforcing new coal-dust regulations aimed at preventing the continued rise of black-lung disease among Central Appalachian coal miners. The move comes just days after the Labor Department said it would create a team of experts and lawyers to determine how best to increase regulation.

Recent investigative media reports from The Charleston Gazette, National Public Radio and the Center for Public Integrity found black lung is again on the rise in Central Appalachia -- Eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia and southwest Virginia -- and has quadrupled since the 1980s. Many new cases are showing up in surface miners.

Lexington Herald-Leader photo

Committee Chair Hal Rogers of Kentucky, left, whose 5th District has some of the highest rates of black lung, defended the panel's move. He said the proposed coal-dust rules rely on 15-year-old studies and questionable data, reports James Carroll, Washington correspondent of The Courier-Journal. “The health and safety of our coal miners should take precedent above all else, which is why these rules should be based on sound, up-to-date scientific evidence,” Rogers told the Louisville newspaper. (Read more)

Some experts say the current rate of black lung has reached "epidemic proportions," the Gazette's Ken Ward Jr. wrote on Coal Tattoo. He quotes California Democratic Rep. George Miller: "Republicans are sending a message that profits for their wealthy campaign contributors are more important than the lungs and lives of America's coal miners." West Virginia Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller said regulations to limit black lung are "essential, especially when we know that black lung rates are rising in a new generation of miners." (Read more)

Labor Dept. reacts to black-lung series with team to study how to improve coal-dust enforcement

The recent revelations by the combined work of three news organizations about the resurgence of black-lung disease in coal miners in Appalachia at first seemed to fall on deaf ears. This riled one of the reporters, Ken Ward Jr. of The Charleston Gazette, who wrote early last Friday of his disgust that there had been no immediate outrage over the hard fact made plain: It was clear that miners had been made promises that weren't kept and had been lied to for decade. By Monday, he was updating with some reaction to the question he asked: Where is the outrage? (Undated photo: West Virginia University collection)

Now, the Gazette, NPR and the Center for Public Integrity, the organizations which did the stories, hear that the Mine Safety and Health Administration and its parent agency, the Labor Department, "are putting together a team of agency experts and lawyers to specifically consider how to bolster coal mine dust enforcement given the statutory and regulatory weaknesses detailed " in the stories, NPR's Howard Berkes writes. "The effort includes discussion of how the agency might be more aggressive in filing civil and criminal actions against mining companies that violate coal mine dust standards, according to an internal Labor Department communication obtained by NPR."

Another new development, Ward reports, was a filing of a new lawsuit against Alpha Natural Resources by miner Terry Evan Lilly, "who alleges that mining practices — including cheating on respirable dust sampling — led to him getting the most serious form of black lung disease. Among other things, the suit filed by Morgantown lawyer Al Karlin accuses mine management where he worked" of instructing miners to hang air sampling pumps designed to measure dust exposures in areas where the air was clean instead of keeping the sampling pumps with them in the air where they were actually working. One of the mines Lilly worked at was Upper Big Branch, where 29 miners died in an explosion two years ago. The mine was owned by Massey Energy, which Alpha bought. Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin confirmed to Ward that his office is examining "potential criminal violations related to dust-cheating, as part of its continuing probe of the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster," Ward reports.

The Appalachian News-Express, a thrice-weekly in Pikeville, Ky., has some ideas for solving the black-lung problem: "First and foremost, stop letting the coal companies — who are chafing against the regulations to begin with — report their own dust sampling data to determine if the regulations are being complied with. There’s simply too much opportunity, and temptation, for companies to massage their data to suggest compliance. Second, if companies are found in violation of the coal dust standards, enforce those violations. MSHA needs to stop granting extensions when violations are found that allow unsafe coal dust levels to persist for weeks, or even months, before being corrected.
Last, increasing the fines for violations of coal dust standards may convince coal companies that complying with the regulations is more cost-effective than breaking them. And if we directed the increased revenues from fines to help pay for the health care costs of black lung victims, it’s a win-win situation." (Read more, subscription required)

Three news organizations team up to examine surge in black lung disease among Appalachian coal miners

Black lung sufferer Ray Marcum, with
son Thomas. All three of his sons
have the disease. (Photo via AP)

Government laboratory results have confirmed what miners in small Appalachian towns and remote hollows already know to be true: Black lung is back. The disease's resurgence represents the the federal government's failure to deliver on its 40-year-old pledge to miners, but there is plenty of blame to go around, according to an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity, National Public Radio and Ken Ward Jr. of The Charleston Gazette.

The multi-part package revealed results that are disheartening even to those already familiar with the work, life and politics of the Central Appalachian coalfield. The report finds that the system set up "for monitoring dust levels is tailor-made for cheating, and mining companies haven’t been shy about doing so. Meanwhile, regulators often have neglected to enforce even these porous rules. Again and again, attempts at reform have failed."

The in-depth series looks at the failure of institutions, governmental agencies and mining companies to protect the miner, and some miners' own shortcomings. It quotes doctors who believed that, decades after the disease was first detected, it would have no longer exist because of tighter controls and safer standards. Howard Berkes of NPR and Chris Hamby of CPI talked to miners who must endure a tortuous regimen to breathe and feel betrayed by a system that demonstrated little proof that it wished to protect them from what it knew to be dangerous.

CPI's analysis of data from the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration "found that miners have been breathing too much dust for years, but MSHA has issued relatively few violations and routinely allowed companies extra time to fix problems. MSHA chief Joe Main issued a statement in response to the findings: 'The current rules have been in effect for decades, do not adequately protect miners from disease and are in need of reform. That is why MSHA has proposed several changes to overhaul the current standards and reduce miners' exposure to unhealthy dust.' Similar attempts at reform have died twice before."

In the mid-1990s, medical experts began noticing an increase in black-lung diagnoses, including among younger miners and a more rapid progression to severe stages of sickness. The trend is most acute in a triangular region of Appalachia that includes Eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia and southwest Virginia. "Since [federal regulators] started protecting us ... 70,000 of us have died," says Mark McCowan, a 47-year-old former coal miner from Pounding Mill, Va., who worked 21 years underground. McCowan suffers from progressive massive fibrosis, the worst stage of the disease, and says, "I don't feel very protected."

The National Mining Association, the main trade group representing mining companies, disputes some of the government's data and the analysis, but agrees that black lung’s resurgence is a problem in need of attention. To the association, however, it is primarily a regional phenomenon of Central Appalachia — one that doesn’t justify new national rules.

There are theories about why the disease has returned, but no definitive answers. One likely explanation: Miners are breathing a more potent mix of dust. When the rock above and below a coal seam is ground up, it releases silica, which is more harmful to the lungs than coal dust and can cause accelerate the disease process. That's one reason surface miners are at risk as well as underground miners. As thicker coal seams have been mined out, companies are mining thinner seams, so there is more silica exposure per ton of coal produced. At the same time, the price of coal and advances in mining technology mean that some surface mines excavate almost 20 times as much rock and dirt as coal. (Read more)

Coal trio: Stories on black lung, surface mining and carbon capture and storage all break new ground

Today's newspapers had three important stories about coal, each touching on one of the three main aspects that make it controversial: health and safety in underground mines; environmental damage from surface mines and old deep mines; and the technical obstacles that face carbon capture and sequestration, which could be key to cutting coal's contributions to climate change.

Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston Gazette and Chris Hamby of the Center for Public Integrity teamed up with NPR News to explain how the main disease of underground mining, black lung, has again become prevalent and why efforts against it have stalled. Today's stories are the start of a package that will continue Monday in the Gazette and on NPR. (Links updated) The stories are part part of "Hard Labor," an occasional series on health, safety and economic threats to U.S. workers.

Ronnie Ellis of Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. reports on the murder of a creek near Hueysville, Ky., where retired state police dispatcher Rick Handshoe, left, had hoped to turn over his home to his daughter. He says blowouts from a reclaimed strip mine and an old underground mine have ruined the creek and put him in fear of a landslide that could kill him and his family. For the story in The Independent of Ashland, a CNHI paper, click here. In a sidebar, state officials say they're taking the complaints seriously but don't have enough evidence to issue citations. (Photo by John Flavell)

James Bruggers of The Courier-Journal in Louisville reports that the idea of stripping carbon dioxide from power-plant emissions and storing it forever in deep rock formations may not be as feasible as experts had thought, because the National Academy of Sciences "suggests that the process could build up enough pressure to cause minor to moderate earthquakes," and a Stanford University geophysics professor has told a Senate committee "that large-scale carbon capture and storage is a risky strategy that will likely fail," Bruggers writes. And he seems to be on to something: James Cobb, director of the Kentucky Geological Survey, told him, “I was convinced we’d be doing some amount of carbon capture and storage in Kentucky. Now, I’m not so sure.”

CDC says 4% of Central Appalachian surface miners tested have black-lung disease

Nearly 4 percent of surface coal miners who work in Central Appalachia who were tested for a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have black lung disease, compared to 2 percent of all U.S. surface miners and 3.2 percent of underground coal miners. (Getty Images photo)

Though the study didn't test Kentucky separately from the 14 other states assessed, Laura Ungar of The Courier-Journal in Louisville asked about it and found that "13 of 230 Kentucky surface miners tested — or 5.7 percent — had black lung," she reports, quoting Cara Halldin, a CDC epidemic intelligence service officer, as calling that number " a disproportionate burden."

It's not clear why the incidence is higher in Central Appalachia than other parts of the country, but Halldin suspects it has to do with "more years spent mining, area geology or the safety culture at mines," Ungar reports. One study showed miners who work in Central Appalachia typically work 28 years in the mines while non-Appalachian miners work average 20 years.

Black-lung disease, or coal workers' pneumoconiosis, is the result of miners repeatedly inhaling the dust that comes from extracting coal. That dust occurs whether the miner is under- or above-ground. "Coal mining is really, really dusty. Don't matter what you do, you're in the dust," said John Bud Ritchie, a retired surface miner who has black lung disease. "It's real rough. You can't hardly keep the dust down on hot days."

The federal exposure limit for "respirable dust" in underground and surface mines is 2 milligrams of coal dust per cubic meter of air. That limit was set in 1969, along with a law that set up "a surveillance system for assessing prevalence of black lung among underground coal miners," Ungar reports. "But the requirement for surveillance doesn't extend to surface miners." Haldin said, "Industry should recognize this is a problem and their workers are at risk and bring down the levels." (Read more)

In the wake of the CDC study, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health is offering free black-lung screenings in Eastern Kentucky, Hazard, Ky.'s WYMT-TV reports. The screenings will be at various locations in Eastern Kentucky throughout the summer and will be confidential. They will include a work history questionnaire, chest X-ray and a spirometry test, with the whole process lasting about 25 minutes. NIOSH will provide participants with results of their screenings, and will not release information to the public or give it to coal companies. For a list of when and where the screenings will take place, click here.