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)

Farm Bill and much of rural policy controlled by House committee amendments

Forget the title of the bill Congress passes, Bill Bishop at the Daily Yonder writes. Instead, "check out the amendments -- especially when it comes to bills that come out of the House. Over the last several months, we've seen an increasing number of very important decisions in federal policy being made through amendments to bills in the House of Representatives. Many of these affect rural businesses, people and communities in ways that spell the difference between life and death." For instance, last year the House passed a bill that provided money for agriculture, rural development and the Food and Drug Administration. But it also affected how cattle were sold at auction. Or, just this last week, deep inside a 165-page bill designed to fund the Labor Department, there's language that bars the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration from implementing or enforcing new rules aimed at reducing the exposure of miners to the coal dust that causes black-lung disease. (Photo: House Agriculture Committee Room)

Now, Bishop warns, the House Agriculture Committee has approved a new Farm Bill and "they are at it again" with their amendments. "Just a few dozen House members are telling the USDA to accept genetically engineered crops quickly. Just 30-odd members of the House Agriculture Committee are re-writing rules governing food labeling and the contracts made between poultry growers and the few companies that control the chicken business. All it takes is an interested representative and the entire direction of federal policy can be changed in the blink of an amendment." (Read more)

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)