black lung silicosis

new/ belated?

see silicosis

see chao mcconn

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[[Ayn Rand Hypocrisy Award

sob, wheeler heads EPA minon

(corp feelings hurt, fu mr nutterbutter

Corporations gain when a coal company sues a public interest group for criticizing it allegedly causing the corporation to suffer mental anguish and emotional distress.  People lose because the public interest group must spend big dollars defending itself against bogus claim .  Murray Energy v. Public Citizen (2014).

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you can't make this up: https://www.deseret.com/utah/2020/10/1/21497568/former-coal-ceo-robert-murray-files-black-lung-benefits-crandall-canyon-mine-robert-murray-energy

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mofo:

epa coal regs 5/14

The National Mining Association, which represents large coal companies such as Peabody Coal Co, Arch Coal Inc, Alpha Natural Resources and Cloud Peak Energy Inc., “has spent $1 million on a radio and digital campaign in five states depicting shocked consumers opening expensive electricity bills,” Reuters reported. The advertisements claim that electricity bills will jump by 80 percent as a result of the Obama administration’s proposal to limit carbon pollution from new coal and natural gas plants, something the Washington Post’s Fact Checker recently said was “wholly unsupported” and reliant on “bogus, hyped evidence to make its claim.”

The NMA has spoken out against new coal dust regulations aimed at reducing cases of black lung disease in coal miners, claiming the administration’s long-awaited rule is unnecessary and criticizing multiple studies that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) determined were sound. The NMA also intervened in a recent court decision to restore a law overturned by the Bush administration designed to keep toxic coal mining spoil from entering sensitive waterways, saying they found the ruling “obviously very disappointing.”

===]]]

Former coal CEO Robert Murray files for black lung benefits

By Associated PressOct 1, 2020

[Robert Murray, founder, owner, president and CEO of Murray Energy Corp. gives a briefing on efforts to find trapped miners at the Crandall Canyon Mine near Huntington, Utah. Murray stated it would take a minimum of 3 days to get to the miners. A mine collapse trapped 6 miners about 1700 hundred feet below the surface. They believe the collapse was caused by an earthquake about a mile below where the miners were working. Aug. 7, 2007 Photo by Stuart Johnson], Deseret News]

CHARLESTON, W.Va. —Former coal CEO Robert E. Murray, who has fought federal regulations on the industry, has filed an application with the U.S. Department of Labor for black lung benefits, according to a published report.

West Virginia Public Broadcasting and Ohio Valley ReSource report the former head of Murray Energy said on the form that he is still board chairman of the company but can no longer serve as president and CEO due to his health.

Murray has fought federal mine safety regulations for years. His company [vs NMA?]filed an unsuccessful lawsuit in 2014 over regulations to cut the amount of coal dust in coal mines to reduce the incidence of black lung disease, saying they were overly burdensome and costly to the industry.

Murray owned the Crandall Canyon Mine in Emery County, Utah, where two collapses in 2007 killed nine men — six who were trapped and three trying to rescue them. In one volatile news conference outside the mine, Murray vehemently defended the mining industry, went off on global warming and called out by name reporters and news outlets whose stories on the collapse he deemed nonfactual.

The government later fined Genwal Resources, the operator of the mine at the time, $1.34 million for violations that contributed to the deaths of six miners plus nearly $300,000 for other violations. In 2012, Genwal Resources admitted in federal court to misdemeanor criminal charges of violating federal mine health and safety laws, though the charges weren’t directly related to the fatal collapses. The company was fined $500,000.

In the black lung claim, Murray, 80, says he is heavily dependent on oxygen and is “near death.”

Murray Energy Holdings emerged last month from federal bankruptcy protection under a new name and ownership group.

The new company, St. Clairsville, Ohio-basedAmerican Consolidated Natural Resources Inc., is the largest privately owned U.S. coal operator with active mines in Alabama, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and Utah.

West Virginia Public Broadcasting and Ohio Valley ReSource confirmed the authenticity of Murray’s claim documents by entering his last name, birthdate and a case ID number into an online portal maintained by the Labor Department. If the claim goes before an administrative law judge, some parts would become public.

Murray says in the claim that he worked underground while supervising operations for several years.

“During my 63 years working in underground coal mines, I worked 16 years every day at the mining face underground and went underground every week until I was age 75,” Murray wrote.

Murray declined to speak on the record with the news outlets, but said he has black lung from working in underground mines and is entitled to benefits. He also disputed that he fought regulations to stop black lung and threatened to file a lawsuit if a story was published indicating he fought federal regulations and benefits, the outlets said.

Murray told NPR last year that his lung disease was not caused by working in underground mines.

“It’s idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. IPF, and it is not related to my work in the industry. They’ve checked for that,” Murray told NPR. “And it’s not — has anything to do with working in the coal mines, which I did for 17 years underground every day. And until I was 76, I went underground twice a week.”

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huffpo 12/11

wASHINGTON -- Having left Congress after an embarrassing 2007 arrest, former Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) has quietly reemerged in Washington as a lobbyist working on behalf of the coal industry. According to his federal filings, Craig has registered to wheedle his former Capitol colleagues on the obscure but critical issue of mine safety.

It's an issue that Craig's new client, Murray Energy, knows all too well. The largest privately held coal company in the nation, Murray Energy owned a subsidiary that ran the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah, the site of a tragic cave-in incident that took the lives of six miners and later three rescuers. The cave-in occurred in August 2007, just weeks after Craig was arrested for allegedly soliciting sex in an airport bathroom.

the addition of a heavyweight like Craig to the coal lobby serves as a reminder of just how difficult it can be to pass mine safety reform in the face of industry influence, even in the aftermath of the worst mining disaster in 40 years. Since 29 miners died in an explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia in April 2010, a bill that would further empower the Mine Safety and Health Administration to shut down dangerous mines and punish unsafe operators has languished in Congress. Now that more than a year and a half has passed, the window of opportunity may have already closed for meaningful reform, industry observers say.

"We knew at the very beginning that the further you get from the [Upper Big Branch] tragedy, the less likely it is to get something passed," says a senior Democratic aide. "The pay-to-play politics eventually comes into play. And that's exactly what happened."

The status quo may well be what Murray Energy and the coal lobby are hoping for. Since the Crandall Canyon disaster, congressional staffers who work closely on mine safety issues have come to know the firm's tough CEO, Robert Murray, simply as "Mr. Murray," and they consider him and other deep-pocketed coal operators a prime obstacle to stronger mining regulations.A big Republican donor, Murray feuded publicly with safety-minded Democrats who called for criminal prosecutions of Crandall Canyon managers after the tragedy. A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Utah says the Crandall Canyon case is "ongoing," although no charges have been filed in more than four years.

Murray Energy has paid Craig's consultancy and lobby shop, New West Strategies, $200,000 this year to work on legislation surrounding mine safety as well as greenhouse gas emissions. When asked for details about the firm's work, Craig's partner and former chief of staff, Michael Ware, said, "I'm not going to talk to you at all." Murray Energy has so far spent nearly $400,000 on lobbying this year, according to the watchdog group Center for Responsive Politics.

rob Murray, vice president and son to the CEO, declined to talk in detail about Murray Energy'sstance on MSHA and mine safety reform. In an email, he said the company was working to "inform lawmakers of practical solutions to improve the working environment in mines," adding that "the overall health and safety of our employees is our number one priority."

At the time of the tragedy, Robert Murray blamed the mine collapse at Crandall Canyon on an earthquake -- an assertion challenged by MSHA, which levied more than $1 million in penalties against the mine. Similarly, officers at Massey Energy, the owner of Upper Big Branch, have attributed that disaster to a natural explosion, contrary to the findings of both an independent investigative panel and a team of MSHA investigators.

Two exhaustive reports produced on Massey have put the blame squarely on a corporate culture that put profits before workers' well-being. Investigators noted that the company routinely hid safety problems from inspectors and intimidated workers who spoke out about dangerous conditions. Managers went so far as to maintain two sets of safety books -- one that included documented dangers at the mine, and a separate sanitized version for inspectors to see. Alpha Natural Resources, Massey's new owner, has entered into a $210 million settlement over Massey's role in the disaster, though officials have left open the possibility of prosecuting individual Massey officers.

Cynical as it may sound, safety advocates note that the wake of a mining disaster is usually the best opportunity to reform mining law and MSHA, since public attention so rarely turns to such issues. Justin Feldman, worker health and safety advocate at Public Citizen, says he's disappointed but not shocked that nothing legislatively has been done. Feldman says he's actually spoken with congressional aides who wrongly believe a bill was passed after Upper Big Branch.

"We don't see any momentum on this issue," says Feldman. "The industry has survived this, in terms of not being subject to new regulations. ... When I talk to Republicans on this, the first they say is, 'Let's wait for the [next] report to come out.'"

Even piecemeal reforms have proven nearly impossible to get through the GOP-led House. For example, Republicans have twice tried to block a new rule aimed at reducing the number of miners who suffer and die from black lung disease.In September House Republicans tried to scuttle the rule, which would lower the amount of allowable coal dust in a mine's atmosphere, in a health-and-labor budget bill. And last week, as lawmakers scrambled to avoid a shutdown, Republicans put a rider in the budget bill that would simply delay implementation of the new rule by eight months, a move that the United Mine Workers of America said could cost lives.

Since Upper Big Branch, MSHA officials have been trying to clear the agency's infamous backlog of safety cases, which hovered around 70,000 as of the end of September. Many mine owners appeal their safety violations simply as a matter of course, allowing them to continue operating as the judicial process drags on. A 2008 congressional report found that Murray Energy, for instance, had enacted a "blanket policy of contesting all MSHA safety violations, regardless of the merits of the contest petition."

Led by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Reps. George Miller (D-Calif.) and Shelly Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), some lawmakers have sought to expand MSHA's limited subpoena power and boost civil and criminal penalties on operators who break the law. Those reforms have been kept at bay by the coal industry, which has spent at least $13 million on lobbying this year, and industry-friendly Republicans, who seem loath to impose any regulations on Big Coal. Earlier this year, an official with the industry group the National Mining Association (NMA), speaking as a guest of the GOP, went so far as to tell lawmakers at a mine safety hearing that the industry should be allowed to simply police itself.

"We're trying to be open-minded about it," NMA spokesman Luke Popovich tells HuffPost, speaking about MSHA reform. "We don't see the need for additional authority. MSHA has only started to use the authority it has that could improve mine safety."

As Upper Big Branch recedes further, reform advocates say it's doubtful they'll eventually overcome both a powerful lobby and anti-regulatory Republicans. Of course, veterans on the issue aren't exactly surprised to see their efforts fizzle. As Rep. Miller himself said earlier this year, "The sad thing is that nothing will happen until the next major disaster."

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/coal-miners-turn-their-backs-on-trump-over-failed-promises-i-dont-care-to-listen-to-him-anymore/

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/theyre-crooks-coal-industry-aims-to-exploit-coronavirus-crisis-to-cut-payments-to-miners-with-black-lung

no lnx omg

‘They’re crooks’: Coal industry aims to exploit coronavirus crisis to cut payments to miners with black lung

Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams April 12, 2020

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Some of the largest coal companies in the United States are using the coronavirus crisis to pressure Congress to slash the tax that finances the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund, a lifeline for more than 20,000 miners whose lung disease makes them more vulnerable to COVID-19.

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The Washington Post reported this week that the National Mining Association (NMA), a trade group that represents the biggest U.S. coal operators still standing,“asked Congress last month for a 55 percent cut in the excise tax for the trust fund, and a suspension of another fee that pays to clean up abandoned mines. Altogether the operators say they could save about $220 million.”

“While the level of taxation to back the fund has fluctuated sharply over the past two years,” the Post noted, “it currently stands at $1.10 for every ton of coal mined underground and 55 cents for surface coal.”

Harold Sturgill, a 60-year-old retired miner who was diagnosed with black lung in 1998, said in an interview with the Post that coal companies are “going to try to use this virus thing to stop paying benefits.”

“They’re crooks,” Sturgill said

Sierra Club

@SierraClub

“The burden should be on the coal operators,” Bounds said. “They come in our state, they mine our coal, they fill their pockets up, they declare bankruptcy. They leave with all the cash, and there’s no money to pay the miners.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/08/coal-black-lung-coronavirus/ … #blacklungkills #covid19

As covid-19 hits, coal companies aim to cut the tax they pay to support black lung miners

The nation’s coal companies, citing the economic impact of the covid-19 pandemic, want to roll back their payments to the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund. That would leave the federal government to...

washingtonpost.com

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The NMA explicitly pointed to the coronavirus crisis in its tax cut request to Congress (pdf)—which was not included in the stimulus package that Congress passed last month—and labeled the coal industry “essential” to energy production in the United States. A group of Republican senators is currently pressuring the Federal Reserve to allow coal companies to benefit from the multi-trillion-dollar CARES Act.

“As the country faces this unique and mounting challenge around the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. coal miners continue to work to provide the resources necessary to power America while bracing for the severe financial distress facing all sectors across the nation,” NMA wrote to congressional leaders. “To minimize the impact of this crisis on the coal industry, Congress should ensure all businesses have the financial resources necessary to ride out the pandemic.”

The group, according to the Post, intends to keep pushing for the tax cut in future stimulus legislation.

As EcoWatch reported earlier this week, “in some states like West Virginia, coal mines have been classified as essential services and are staying open during the COVID-19 pandemic, even though the close quarters miners work in and the known risks to respiratory health put miners in harm’s way during the spread of the coronavirus.”

“Nobody knows what this virus is going to do when it gets to this area,” Jimmy Moore, a 74-year-old black lung patient in Shelby Gap, Kentucky, told HuffPost. “It’s probably just going to wipe us out.”

Miners and advocates have long warned about the financial health of the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund, which is deeply in debt, and repeatedly asked lawmakers to act to ensure that the program is sustainable over the long term. Last July, as Common Dreams reported, a group of around 120 retired miners traveled to Washington, D.C. to demand congressional action to secure the fund’s finances, only to be brushed aside by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican.

Lynda Glagola, chairwoman of the National Coalition of Black Lung and Respiratory Disease Clinics, told the Post that if Congress grants the coal industry its desired tax cut, “the fund will spiral deeper and deeper into debt causing it to become a red financial flag.”

“Especially at this time, as the economy is collapsing right before our eyes,” Glagola warned, “lawmakers will soon be looking for programs to cut to save money and reduce the national debt and deficit.”

In response to NMA’s request, Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.)—chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee—and Rep. Matthew Cartwright (D-Pa.) wrote a letter (pdf) to congressional leaders last month urging them to reject the coal industry’s “wish-list” and “focus federal resources on the workers, families, and communities that are being hardest hit by this crisis.”

“The coal industry is taking advantage of the country’s current circumstances to advocate for policies that are completely unrelated to the current crisis, policies that would in fact set back efforts to improve the health and lives of people across the country,” the lawmakers wrote. “At a time when the country is facing a pandemic due to a respiratory illness, it is particularly egregious for the coal industry to advocate reducing the Black Lung Excise Tax.”

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NAS 220

3. Nathan Schactman is a lawyer who has published muchon evidence. Product liability lawsuits can range from bogus to strongly merited and either may have good or bad lawyers. He may or may not be a “product defense lawyer” (akin to Louis Anthony Cox) defending companies against legitimate complaints.

David Michaels in *Triumph of Doubt*(2020) (review) devotes a whole chapter, p.117-140 to “Deadly Dust (silica).” Hence, it is somewhat worrying to see this in Schactman's blog:

“Contesting An Erroneous Diagnosis of Silicosis,” for Harris Martin Seminars, in New Orleans, Louisiana (March 26, 2004) “Should an ILO 1/0 Be Compensated in Silica Litigation,” for Harris Martin Seminars, in New York, New York (January 29, 2003)

“State-of-the-Art Defense in Silica Litigation,” Chair and presenter at Mealey’s Silica Litigation Conference, in Atlanta, Georgia (October 13 and 14, 2003)

“Silicosis Litigation,” to Merrill-Lynch Institutional Investors, in Philadelphia, PA (October 7, 2003)

“Stop Silicosis Litigation – Now,” at Industrial Minerals Association – North America’s Semiannual Meeting, in Washington, D.C. (September 25, 2003)”

Also concerning are articles like The Trials and Tribulations of Two Historians: Adjudicating Responsibility for Pollution and Personal Harm (2009), by Columbia's David Rosner and CUNY's Gerald Markowitz, who wrote Deadly Dust(1991):

“For most of the 1990s the attempts to undermine our work were done in depositions, generally private meetings where we could defend our reputations by presenting the documents we had uncovered. While the depositions were trying, in fact we had the materials available and often provided thousands of pages to defence attorneys. But that began to change shortly after the turn of the new century. The first shot across the bow occurred at a meeting of lawyers sponsored by LexisNexis in Washington at which Nathan Schachtman, an attorney with McCarter & English in Philadelphia, gave a lengthy address attacking us and our book. In Mealey's Litigation Report: Silica, published in 2003, he castigated us for writing a “jeremiad” that “resonates to the passions and prejudices of the last century”. He took us to task for our “prejudice” that “silicosis results from the valuation of profits over people and for not pointing out that in Communist countries silicosis rates were much higher. “They fairly consistently excuse or justify the actions of labor … They excoriate the motives and actions of industry …”. Later on the same page, Schachtman argued that our “thesis ignores the practical … problem of motivating or mandating workers to take appropriate measures to protect themselves”.17 Schachtman saw no problem with accusing us of sloppy scholarship, arguing that we are little more than propagandists, all in the first page of his piece. … (much more).” [emphasis added]

This seems akin to Wood's style of attack....

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But it’s already clear that in the early days of the climate wars, nobody was a bigger player than Big Coal. The industry had decades of experience undermining, subverting, and obfuscating science in their battles over air pollution laws, water pollution laws at mining sites, and safety regulations for deep miners (the recent outbreak of black lung disease among coal miners – a terrifying disease that should have been eliminated in the 1920s – is further evidence of Big Coal’s indifference to the health and welfare of workers).

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ref

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/an-epidemic-is-killing-thousands-of-coal-miners-regulators-could-have-stopped-it/

npr 11/18

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“I’m terrified,” Smith said, as he remembered his father’s suffering when he was struggling with the same coal miner’s disease.

“I sure don’t want to go through what he went through. I seen a lot of guys that died of black lung and they all suffered like that.”

A multiyear investigation by NPR and FRONTLINE found that Smith and Kelly are part of a tragic and recently discovered outbreak of the advanced stage of black lung disease, known as complicated black lung or progressive massive fibrosis.

A federal monitoring program reported just 99 cases of advanced black lung disease nationwide from 2011-2016. But NPR identified more than 2,000 coal miners suffering from the disease in the same time frame, and in just five Appalachian states.

And now, an NPR/FRONTLINE analysis of federal regulatory data — decades of information recorded by dust-collection monitors placed where coal miners work — has revealed a tragic failure to recognize and respond to clear signs of danger.

For decades, government regulators had evidence of excessive and toxic mine dust exposures, the kind that can cause PMF, as they were happening. They knew that miners like Kelly and Smith were likely to become sick and die. They were urged to take specific and direct action to stop it. But they didn’t.

“We failed,” said Celeste Monforton, a former mine safety regulator in the Clinton administration who reviewed the NPR/FRONTLINE findings.

“Had we taken action at that time, I really believe that we would not be seeing the disease we’re seeing now,” said Monforton, now a workplace safety advocate who teaches at George Washington and Texas State universities.

“Having miners die at such young ages from exposures that happened 20 years ago … I mean this is such a gross and frank example of regulatory failure.”

It’s an “epidemic” and “clearly one of the worst industrial medicine disasters that’s ever been described,” said Scott Laney, an epidemiologist at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

“We’re counting thousands of cases,” he said. “Thousands and thousands and thousands of black lung cases. Thousands of cases of the most severe form of black lung. And we’re not done counting yet.”

“They’re essentially suffocating while alive”

This advanced stage of black lung leaves lungs crusty and useless, says Dr. Robert Cohen, a pulmonologist at the University of Illinois, Chicago who has spent decades studying black lung and PMF disease.

“You have a much harder time breathing so that you can’t exercise,” Cohen noted. “Then you can’t do some simple activities. Then you can barely breathe just sitting still. And then you require oxygen. And then even the oxygen isn’t enough. And so … they’re essentially suffocating while alive.”

The toxic mine dust that causes severe disease isn’t coal dust alone. It includes silica, which is generated when miners cut sandstone as they mine coal. Many coal seams in central Appalachia are embedded in sandstone that contains quartz. And when quartz is cut by mining machines, it creates fine and barbed particles of silica dust — fine enough to be easily inhaled and sharp enough to lodge in lungs forever.

In the past 30 years, the biggest coal seams were mined out in Appalachia, leaving thinner seams coursing through sandstone.

“All the good seams were gone because there were hardly no solid seams of coal left,” the 54-year-old Kelly remembered. “And there [was] more rock in the coal.”

The silica dust that resulted from cutting that rock was far more dangerous than coal dust alone.

Silica is “somewhere around 20 times more toxic and can cause disease much more rapidly,” said Laney.

The NPR/FRONTLINE investigation found thousands of instances in which miners were exposed — not just to coal dust but to dangerous levels of toxic silica dust. The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration’s own data chronicle 21,000 instances of excessive exposure to silica since 1986.

At the same time, NPR identified black lung diagnoses involving miners in their 30s who also experienced rapid progression to the advanced stage of PMF. Smith says he was diagnosed with PMF at 39. NIOSH has confirmed this trend in its studies.

[vid]

"We’ve got the bodies to prove it”

NPR/FRONTLINE analyzed 30 years of data collected by federal regulators. They measure coal and silica dust where miners are working, and in 85 percent of the samples collected silica was at safe levels. But for that other 15 percent — which amounts to 21,000 dust samples — the data show that miners were exposed to excessive silica levels that violated federal health standards.

“That’s what causes disease, is the excessive exposure,” said Jim Weeks, an industrial hygienist and mine dust specialist at MSHA in the Obama administration and at the United Mine Workers union before that.

An NPR review of mine dust regulations also found that federal enforcement does not directly address silica dust. If regulators measure too much silica in mine air, they place coal mines on much tougher limits for coal dust. That’s supposed to lower the silica exposure because coal and silica dust are often mixed.

But our investigation found that this indirect approach to controlling silica dust didn’t always work. MSHA’s 30 years’ dust sampling data show dangerous levels of silica or quartz where miners were working close to 9,000 times, even after coal mines were required to meet reduced limits for coal mine dust.

“They didn’t pay sufficient attention,” Weeks concludes. “And …we’ve got the bodies to prove it. I mean these guys wouldn’t be dying if people had been paying attention to quartz. It’s that simple.”

We found another example of overexposure in MSHA’s data. Each time federal mine inspectors issued citations for too much silica, which they did only a fraction of the time, they included an estimate of how many miners were affected. A review of those data shows more than 9,000 workers were exposed to silica levels that the regulations considered dangerous.

This excessive exposure to silica almost certainly happens more often than the data suggest. That’s because the data show only what happens when regulators are checking. The inspectors don’t check most of the time miners are working. Dust sampling takes place during regular mine inspections, which are scheduled four times a year in underground mines and twice a year at surface operations.

And until recently, sampling did not take place every hour miners worked or while mines were at full production.

Another finding of the NPR/FRONTLINE investigation: During some of the heaviest periods of exposure to silica, regulations allow miners to work without any monitoring for it at all.

A white rock dust

Smith drove us past a pair of adjacent coal mines near his home in Canada, Ky., where he and other miners cut nothing but rock for months.

He was reluctant to pull over at the Rockhouse Energy Mine, even though it is closed, because security guards were watching from a parking lot. So he slowly passed by, describing work shifts that lasted 16 hours a day, seven days a week, for months, while cutting through solid rock. They used drills and mining machines to dig from one coal seam to another underground.

“It wasn’t coal dust that you would see,” Smith said. “It was more of a white rock … dust.”

Smith and his coworkers were cutting what’s called a slope mine. It’s not really mining because there’s no coal involved. It’s all about cutting through mountainsides or blocks of rock to reach coal seams.

And because there’s no coal, it is considered development mining or construction. So sampling the air for toxic dust is not required, even though it is the most dangerous dust. Former MSHA officials told us some inspectors did it, but most did not.

Smith spent months cutting at least two slope mines in his career and believes that could explain his severe disease, even though he worked underground only 12 years.

“Very possible,” he said, as we passed the mine’s abandoned conveyor belts that stretch over the road. “Most of my mining career I run a continuous miner. I run a roof bolter also. And it’s very possible from all the hours we worked.”

Roof bolters operate a machine that pins roof supports into underground mines by drilling into solid rock. The machines have customized dust-control systems that suck away dust, but miners complain they get bursts of silica dust when they begin drilling and then later when they empty boxes that collect the dust that was sucked away during drilling.

The machine known as a continuous miner grinds up rock and coal. Dust is supposed to be controlled by massive ventilation fans that pump air through the mine, while heavy curtains channel that air to sweep away dust. Mining machines spray water as they cut, to tamp down dust.

NPR interviewed 34 coal miners, all diagnosed with PMF and with 12 to 40 years in mining in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia and Kentucky. Sometimes the dust controls worked, most told us, and sometimes they didn’t.

Federal law requires mining companies to offer dust masks or respirators to miners, but their use is not required. The law considers them a secondary and optional means of protection. Mines are required to provide air clear of dangerous dust, first and foremost.

Most of the sick and dying miners we interviewed who used dust masks said they often didn’t work.

“They would clog up with dust, sweat and spit,” said Edward Wayne Brown, who spent 21 years underground in Buchanan County, Va. “And then it feels like somebody just sitting there with their hand over your face.”

In fact, dozens of miners, including Smith, have filed product liability lawsuits against dust mask suppliers. Most cases are still pending but a few have resulted in multimillion-dollar verdicts for the miners.

“This is probably the oldest known occupational hazard,” said retired industrial hygienist Weeks, who has a collection of antique books to prove it — with references to mine dust hazards from Pliny the Elder in the first century and another dating to the 15th century.

“There’s nothing new about this,” Weeks added. “And you’d think by now we’d have figured out how to deal with it.”

Awareness of silica dust as a hazard in the United States goes back at least 100 years, with a series of studies and reports beginning in 1908. In the 1930s, hundreds of workers were sickened and killed by exposure to silica dust while tunneling through a mountain of solid rock in West Virginia.

In 1974, NIOSH first called for silica exposure limits twice as strict as those in place for coal miners and other workers. But it wasn’t until the 1990s that MSHA and others began to get serious about silica in coal mines.

NPR and FRONTLINE obtained internal memos from the Clinton administration that showed alarm back then about clusters of advanced lung disease among coal miners as young as 40. MSHA sent out alerts to coal mining companies, warning about excessive exposure to silica dust and severe disease among miners. NIOSH again called for a silica exposure limit that would be twice as tough, plus separate regulation of silica, as did a Department of Labor advisory committee.

“We started a national campaign first to raise awareness,” recalled Davitt McAteer, the assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health from 1994 to 2000.

“And it was that campaign that began to try to go after the silica requirements, raise the silica standard, and start on a separate path to control silica.”

McAteer proposed a major overhaul of the dust samplingsystem, which included other loopholes that permitted excessive exposures and inaccurate measurement of coal mine dust.But the effort encountered stiff opposition from the National Mining Association, the industry’s biggest lobbying group. The group sued over some elements of the plan and won.

“And then we ran out of time,” McAteer says. “And it’s something that’s unfortunate and put a lot of lives at risk.”

Mine dust loopholes

The regulation of silica dust wasn’t addressed during the administration of George W. Bush. During the Obama administration, mine safety advocate Joe Main was in charge of MSHA. Main was the longtime health and safety director at the mineworkers union and was on that Labor Department advisory committee that sought tougher regulation of silica back in 1996.

“It was very obvious that that whole scheme that had been in place, that has left so many people sick, had to be changed and had to be fixed,” Main said.

He was successful in closing major mine dust loopholes, and he deployed new technology — dust sampling devices that measured coal dust in real time and helped make sampling more immediate, honest and accurate.

Main also made the exposure limit for coal mine dust tougher. But not the exposure limit for silica. He didn’t include any specific action on silica in his plan.

“A high tide rises all boats, as the saying goes,” Main explained. “We were going to get a benefit out of reducing overall dust exposure by what we did. [That] would not only lower coal mine dust but all dust that was part of that, including silica.”

But as the NPR/FRONTLINE data analysis shows, that formula failed thousands of times in the past. Lowering overall mine dust doesn’t necessarily reduce silica exposure to safe levels.

Monforton wonders why MSHA missed or ignored that part of the dust sampling data.

“The fact that [NPR and FRONTLINE] went back for 30 years and looked at that data, and that data was available to the agency to assess as well, why wasn’t that problem recognized and rectified?” Monforton asked.

Main and other former MSHA officials say they thought they were doing what they needed to do to control silica.

Another agency did act on silica during the Obama administration. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration concluded a 44-year review of silica exposure by enacting tougher regulation of silica dust.

So now, every industry in the country that cuts rock, every industry except mining, has separate regulation of silica and an exposure limit twice as tough — the limit first recommended by NIOSH in 1974.

Mining companies also knew they were cutting more quartz, creating more silica dust, and exposing miners to toxic dust. They were not only clearly warned by MSHA in the 1990s; they could see what was going on in their mines. Cutting rock slows mining machines and hurts production. And rock has to be removed from coal before it can be sold.

So NPR and FRONTLINE wanted to know why mining companies didn’t act on their own to protect their workers.

“Sure they could have done that,” responded Bruce Watzman, the National Mining Association’s top lobbyist for more than 30 years. “But … I’m not going to speculate on why they did or didn’t do what they chose.”

“Our focus here is forward looking,” he said. “How do we prevent this in the future? I can’t answer for … what happened in the past.”

Watzman also asserted that the industry “is doing far better today than we did in the past, far better.”

That assessment is based on new data from MSHA following the new coal mine dust rules that began to take effect in 2014. Since then, mining companies have met exposure limits for coal and silica dust 99 percent of the time, the data show.

MSHA cited the same data in a written statement to NPR and FRONTLINE.

“The dust rule … has greatly reduced miners’ exposure to respirable dust,” wrote MSHA spokeswoman Amy Louviere, who also noted a sharp drop in the past 10 years in the percentage of mine dust samples with excess silica. Her statement did not address the NPR/FRONTLINE findings showing 30 years of excessive exposure to silica.

“MSHA continues to work diligently to protect coal miners’ health,” Louviere said.

But NIOSH epidemiologist Laney isn’t convinced the problem is solved.

“They’re sampled very infrequently so we don’t know what’s going on with these miners when they’re not being sampled,” Laney said. “Ninety-nine percent of the time we don’t have information on that.”

That’s also the conclusion of a recent review by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The new coal dust rules, the review committee said, “may not guarantee that exposures will be controlled adequately or that future disease rates will decline.”

It will also take 10 years or more to know whether the new dust rules result in fewer cases of disease. It takes that long for disease to develop.

“I said I suspect silica. I didn’t say it was”

MSHA declined multiple requests for interviews with top agency officials, including David Zatezalo, a former coal company executive and industry lobbyist who now heads the agency.

So we showed up at West Virginia University in September where Zatezalo was scheduled to make a rare public appearance.

“You hear the phrase in health circles of progressive massive fibrosis, these sorts of things,” Zatezalo told an audience of mining engineering students, agency employees and industry executives and lobbyists.

“To me, I believe those are all clearly silica problems,” Zatezalo continued. “Silica is something that has to be controlled.”

But immediately after his speech, when NPR and FRONTLINE approached him, Zatezalo seemed suddenly uncertain about silica and PMF.

“I don’t think that the science of the causation is that well-defined,” Zatezalo said.

Asked about the direct link between silica and disease he described in his speech, Zatezalo became defensive.

“No, I said I suspect silica. I didn’t say it was. … I think until such time as you figure out what it is you don’t really know,” Zatezalo responded.

So far, under Zatezalo, MSHA has no plan to address a tougher limit for silica dust or separate regulation of silica in coal mines.

In the meantime, the PMF epidemic continues. The biggest cluster of disease ever reported, according to NIOSH, continues to build at the Stone Mountain Health Services black lung clinics in Southwestern Virginia. The clinics continue to diagnose new cases at the rate of about a dozen a month.

“I’m not seeing any slowdown whatsoever,” says Ron Carson, who directed the Stone Mountain clinics for 28 years before retiring earlier this year.

“I think that America needs to know that these miners … have paid a price,” Carson added, his voice breaking. Carson cited the nation’s decades of dependence on coal for power and steel production.

“They paid a price so that we can have luxury and … so many have died. Thousands have died.”

“Every one of us is either crippled or dead”

Kelly has a long list of simple tasks he can no longer accomplish: walking up his driveway to the mailbox; climbing the few steps to his barn; riding horses; even just getting up to head to the bathroom. He has to stop and rest on the way, he says.

But what hurts the most are the things he can’t do with his grandson, Caden, especially playful wrestling on the floor.

“Now he has to wrestle a pillow while I call the match,” Kelly said, his voice halting and his eyes red. “It’s still fun, but …” and Kelly paused, his face tight and the tears flowing.

“I want to be that pillow.”

Smith pulled up to another mine, which was also closed but had no guards in its weed-choked parking lot. This Solid Energy mine, along with the Rockhouse mine he drove by earlier, was operated byMassey Energy, now a defunct company with deadly mine disasters in its history and a CEO who went to prison for conspiracy to violate mine safety laws.

Smith got out and walked up to a rusted fence with a padlock. A ball cap shaded his face. Sunglasses hid his tears.

“It’s [been] eating at me for the last two years,” he said, “that I’m going to die over this. … Of all the things that could’ve killed me while I did work there, the rockfalls and all that stuff, I lived through all of that. And I find out years later I’m going to die over black lung. And it’s heartbreaking.”

Smith then mentioned his wife and two daughters and wondered what will happen to them when he’s gone. He wondered about the grandchildren he may never see. His voice breaking again, he talked about the excitement of being a young miner, about the hope and promise of good pay and good lives.

“We was all young and strong and stout and they took advantage of us. Every one of us is either crippled or dead. We was all young men,” he said, crying softly.

Back at his house in a narrow valley — a holler — in Canada, Ky., Smith pointed to a family cemetery on a knoll at the edge of the lawn he has so much difficulty mowing. It features a single gravestone with bright flowers and the names of his parents. Behind it, Smith told us, in the shade, is the burial plot he has picked out for himself. He’s 46 years old.

NPR’s Adelina Lancianese, Barbara Van Woerkom, Katie Lawrie and Cat Schuknecht; Elaine McMillion Sheldon of FRONTLINE; Benny Becker and Jeff Young of Ohio Valley ReSource; and Ellen Smith of Mine Safety and Health News contributed to this story.

This story is part of a joint investigation with NPR, which includes an upcoming documentary Coal’s Deadly Dust, scheduled to air Jan. 22 on PBS.

==

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/how-mitch-mcconnell-gave-a-sweet-deal-to-the-kentucky-coal-industry/

no lnx

How Mitch McConnell gave a sweet deal to the Kentucky coal industry

Written by Maureen Nevin Duffy / DC Report December 30, 2019

Kentucky coal miners—along with the rest of us—will be paying the price to keep the government running next year. And we can thank Kentucky’s senior senator, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, for the sellout.

Buried in the giant $1.4 trillion government spending package that McConnell ushered through the Senate last week was a relatively modest $15 billion, 30-year payout to sustain the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund—a boon to the majority leader’s home state coal miners.  As many as 1 in 5 of coal miners suffer from black lung.

But here’s the kicker: What McConnell had removed from the must-pass funding legislation. In order to keep the government running, McConnell threw out provisions that would have forced coal companies to commit to higher payments toward the health-care costs of their employees and retirees, nixing requirements to extend the commitment period and modestly increase the tax on coal mining companies that are supposed to support the trust fund.

In short, McConnell let the coal industry skip out and leave the $15 billion black lung tab for everyone else to pay.

The move was mind-boggling, considering McConnell is already under scrutiny and criticism for partnering with a previously sanctioned Russian businessman, Oleg Deripaska, who McConnell voted to de-sanction. Deripaska, who owns Rusal, a Russian-owned coal company, joined McConnell in a project that his home state of Kentucky voted in 2017 to invest $15M of taxpayer money.

‘A Handout’

“This is a handout. This is a giveaway,” Jim Waters of the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, told WaPo in August. Waters reasoned that judgment might have been clouded by the possible thousands of area jobs that could be added. “I think the excitement of that overrode some of the due diligence.”

McConnell’s strange allegiances to influences domestic and foreign have clearly reached the grassroots level. As Mikaela Curry, a community organizer and member of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, wrote in an op-ed in the Courier-Journal, Feb. 22, entitled, “Mitch McConnell is silent on coal while Kentucky miners suffer and die”:  “When McConnell speaks up for coal, it always seems to align with the people profiting in the fossil fuel industry and not the hard-working people he is supposed to represent.”

Disabled Miners

Most poignant are the call outs to McConnell from those suffering physically as well as financially from his unwillingness to make the coal companies own up to their responsibility to their current and retired workers and their families. Patty Amburgey, now secretary of the local black lung association in Letcher County, is the widow of a coal miner who died of Black Lung Disease after leaving mining, “blind, unable to feel his legs or arms, and constantly short of breath,” according to his obit.

“I’m asking [Mr. McConnell] to please remember that East Kentucky is a mining area,” his widow wrote in Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. “And we do have a lot of miners and the election is coming up. I want him to understand that.” Obviously, Mr. McConnell is betting his Appropriations Bill will heal these sores and smooth his way to re-election.

But that may not be so easy in practice. Instead of increasing the excise tax rate in effect in 2018, which sunset on Jan. 1, 2019, Congress failed to act, which allowed the tax for coal companies to reset to 1985 rates, lowering contributions by 55% (from $1.10 per ton of coal from subsurface mines to $.50 and from $0.55 per ton for coal from surface mines to just $0.25), which many in Congress had contested.

Companies Protected

After congressional wrangling, the 2020 tax rate will revert to 2018 rates of $1.10 and $0.55 per ton, respectively. But those prices will sunset again on Dec. 31, 2020, and if not renewed will revert to the 1978 rate of $0.50 and $0.25 per ton. The companies also are protected from market price rises by a ceiling cap on the tax of 4.4% of its coal selling price.

In June, the House Ways and Means Committee approved a 10-year extension as part of a broader package. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) proposed the rate be renewed at a higher rate through 2029. He and co-sponsors want to see the Trust Fund fully funded with no sunsets.

While Moscow Mitch steers millions toward business ventures with oligarchs, many in Appalachia want lawmakers to realize that a hike in the excise tax of $0.14 per ton for surface-mined coal and $0.28 per ton for underground-mined coal would eliminate the debt in the Fund completely by 2050, according to the General Accounting Office.

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Few still cling to the idea as coal as a savior — not even the state's top energy official, Charles Snavely, a retired coal mining executive who works for Kentucky's Republican Gov. Matt Bevin. Snavely told a gathering of coal companies and representatives of southern governors in May that he saw a greatly diminished future for the industry.

Saving the Black Lung Fund

Black lung is caused by breathing in coal dust, which leads to inflammation, scarring, shortness of breath and respiratory failure. The complications can include chronic bronchitis; obstructive pulmonary disease, which keeps air out of the lungs; and lung cancer. It can take many years for the disease to develop, and there is no cure.

The federal Black Lung Disability Fund provides more than 25,000 miners or their dependents with cash assistance and medical benefits. The maximum cash assistance payments ranged from about $660 to $1,320 per month in 2018, depending on the beneficiary's number of dependents.

For more than 40 years, the disability fund was supported by taxes levied on each ton of mined coal.

But when the tax was rolled back by 55 percent on Jan. 1, as the mining industry had wanted, McConnell chose not to schedule a vote on legislation to stop the reduction. After the General Accounting Office reported in June that taxpayer obligations to the disability fund, already $4 billion in debt, could swell to $15 billion by 2050 without further action by Congress, McConnell remained noncommittal on bills to restore funding and cut red tape so that miners could obtain benefits more easily.

"What they have done is shift the cost to the taxpayers" from coal mining companies, said Phil Smith, spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America. "It's corporate welfare."

Steurer, McConnell's spokesman, provided a statement saying the black lung benefits have continued as they have been and that the "senator and his staff have been working closely with interested parties regarding future funding for the program, and will continue to ensure these important benefits continue."

Without further action by McConnell's Senate majority to restore the tax on coal, the disability fund could begin to run out of money as early as next year.

Only McConnell Can Fix the Pension Fund

The miners' pension fund, established under an executive order of President Harry Truman, today provides about 83,000 miners and their surviving spouses benefits that average $600 a month.

It is also in trouble and will run out of money in 2022 or 2023 without federal assistance.

The pension fund was paid for by payments from mining companies, but bankruptcies and mine closures have meant much of that money is no longer coming into the fund. Its fate is now tied to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, a federal backstop for failed companies that cannot meet their pension obligations. But the PBGC, also facing insolvency, often covers less than half of the pensions workers earned.

"Nobody else can fix this problem," Smith, the union spokesman, said of McConnell and all of the recent coal company bankruptcies. "There isn't enough coal industry left to fix this."

Remnants from the site of an underground coal mine. The state of Kentucky signed off on its reclamation in 1997. Credit: James Bruggers/InsideClimate News

Remnants from the site of an underground coal mine. The state of Kentucky signed off on its reclamation in 1997. Credit: James Bruggers/InsideClimate News

Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, has introduced legislation to use money from the federal government's Abandoned Mine Land fund, a $2.4 billion pot used to clean up   abandoned mine sites, to bolster the pension fund. The program is funded by a fee assessed on each ton of coal produced. He said in late June that McConnell was solely responsible for the lack of action on a bill.

With the pension fund very much on his mind, Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers, sidestepped a question at the National Press Club in early September about whether his organization would throw its weight against McConnell's re-election.

"If you ask Mitch McConnell, we have rallied against him almost every election," Roberts said.

But, he added, "our main goal here is to save our pension plan. If Mitch McConnell wants to be part of saving our pension pan, I will publicly thank him and say I appreciate it very much, and that ought to be helpful to him and his reelection. If he does not, then we will have to reevaluate that."

Stuerer said McConnell has been looking for a broader solution that would involve other troubled pensions.

When Coal Is No Longer King

In 2013, when McConnell as Senate minority leader was sharply criticizing Obama's coal record, two leading Kentucky politicians chose a different road, with thousands of coal families hurting from layoffs. Steve Beshear, the state's Democratic governor from 2007 to 2015, and Republican Hal Rogers, who has represented the state's Appalachian coalfield since 1981, agreed to hold a summit around a regionally difficult-to-swallow fact: coal was no longer king — and it wasn't coming back.

The event in December 2013 drew 1,700 people. But not McConnell. He showed up in Pikeville a few days before the summit for a meeting of his own with hand-picked coal industry supporters to criticize the Obama administration's plan to curb carbon emissions from power plants.

The Beshear-Rogers summit launched the SOAR program, or Shaping Our Appalachian Region, a non-profit, non-partisan organization that has established a network of partners, including the Appalachian Regional Commission and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to create jobs, expand broadband, promote public health and fight opioid addiction.

To date, the program has begun a digital job training program through a $3.5 million grant from the ARC, helped support the installation of 800 miles of new fiber optic cable, helped create a call center for families seeking drug treatment, and supported a new treatment voucher program.

The move to strip mining in the Appalachian Mountains meant fewer mining jobs. Credit: James Bruggers/InsideClimate News

The move to strip mining in the Appalachian Mountains meant fewer mining jobs. Credit: James Bruggers/InsideClimate News

Jared Arnett, SOAR's executive director, said McConnell, while never an overt SOAR participant, "has been supportive (of SOAR) behind the scenes" and has "sent his staff to some of the meetings."

McConnell found the use of strong pro-coal rhetoric advantageous to what has always been his singular goal of winning elections, said Al Cross, the director of the Center for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky. Cross has covered McConnell his entire Senate career.

Cross said a McConnell staffer once told him during an unguarded moment that fully embracing SOAR would be seen as "throwing coal under the bus."

In written responses, Steurer, McConnell's spokesman, did not directly answer a question about his boss' participation in SOAR. Instead, Steurer ticked off a list of other accomplishments. They include protecting the endowment of Kentucky's Berea College, which largely serves Appalachian students, from a new tax so that it could continue to offer free tuition, and securing hundreds of millions of dollars for various economic development efforts serving the wider Appalachian region, including Kentucky.

The Quest to RECLAIM Abandoned Mines

Kentucky stands to get more than $100 million over the next five years to reclaim abandoned mines and promote economic development under legislation introduced in April known as the RECLAIM Act. In all, communities in 20 mining states would divide $1 billion.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Rogers and other House members representing coal country from both parties, calls for speeding up allocations from  the Abandoned Mine Land fund, which has been growing since the late 1970s. Manchin has introduced a version of the RECLAIM Act in the Senate.

"We will need (McConnell) to champion this bill," said Dan Moseley, a Democrat, and the judge executive of Harlan County, one of more than 30 counties or cities across Appalachia that have backed RECLAIM. "We need some of these monies released."

So far, McConnell remains uncommitted to the legislation and has not scheduled Senate consideration. His spokesman, Steurer, said he will work to ensure funding to reclaim abandoned mine lands as well as for economic development efforts in Central Appalachia.  "Our office continues to discuss the issue with constituents and colleagues," Steurer said.

Working with Rogers, McConnell did tap $425 million over four years from the U.S. treasury, beginning in 2016, for what they call an abandoned mine land pilot project, Rogers' spokeswoman, Danielle Smoot, said. Kentucky's share has been $105 million.

However that pilot project's scope is narrower, only six states, and its does not require any mining cleanup.

McConnell also released a letter in late August that he had written to the U.S. Labor Department on behalf of a group of laid-off miners in Harlan County who have since July been blocking a coal train to protest the fact that their final paychecks bounced after their company, Blackjewel, filed for bankruptcy. McConnell asked the department to do everything it could to help the miners. On Friday, the Labor Department announced it would continue funding employment and retraining services for eastern Kentucky coal miners including those who lost Blackjewel jobs with a $3.7 million grant; McConnell took credit for shaking that money loose.

Beyond the bankruptcies, coal companies in Kentucky and other coal mining states have left behind blasted mountaintops, streams that run traffic-cone orange with acid, underground fires, clogged streams and dangerous open mine portals.

"You can't live safely near many of these sites, much less launch a business or get a local economy going," Eric Dixon, senior policy coordinator for Appalachian Citizens Law Center in Letcher County, told a Congressional committee in April.

In his 2016 budget proposal, President Obama included a $1 billion effort for linking economic development to reclaiming abandoned mines, which he called the Power Plus Plan, by accelerating spending from that abandoned mine fund. It went nowhere with McConnell.

McConnell introduced his own version of the $1 billion RECLAIM legislation in 2017 as majority leader but never moved it to the Senate floor for consideration.

Talking Mitch McConnell

On a sweat-dripping early evening in Whitesburg, Shad Baker, a self-described conservative Republican, agreed to talk politics and Mitch McConnell as he sold fresh-picked blueberries grown on a reclaimed strip mine for $10 a quart at the weekly farmers market. Like many others here, he can tick off a list of family members who worked for mining companies — dad, mom, grandfather.

==

icn no links

8 Black Lung Indictments Allege Coal Mine Managers Lied About Health Safety

Former Kentucky miners described being pressured to cover up coal dust monitors meant to protect them. New research shows a resurgence in black lung disease.

James Bruggers

BY JAMES BRUGGERS

JUL 11, 2018

A technician discusses a chest X-ray with a coal miner in Harlan County, Kentucky, as part of a black lung screening program run by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Credit: NOISH

OWENSBORO, Kentucky — Michael "Flip" Wilson spent most of his adult life working deep underground in the coal mines of Western Kentucky. Now 63, he suffers so badly from black lung disease that he doesn't have the breath to play in the yard with his grandchildren.

He earned a good wage from his last employer, Armstrong Coal: $27 an hour plus bonuses and overtime—not bad for a farm kid who dropped out of school before the eighth grade, he said. But when he came forward with safety complaints, including describing how miners felt pressured to cover up the monitors they used to measure and limit their exposure to dangerous coal dust, his relationship with Armstrong turned sour.

He knew the practice well, he said, because he had done it himself.

On Wednesday, eight former supervisors and safety officials at Armstrong were charged by a federal grand jury with conspiracy to defraud federal mine safety officials from 2013 to 2015.

The indictments, announced by U.S. Attorney Russell Colemanat an Owensboro museum that tells the long history of coal mining in this part of the country, charge that the mine personnel sought to deceive regulators with the Federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) about the daily levels of breathable dust at two mines owned by the Armstrong Coal.The company, which was based in Madisonville, Kentucky, has since gone bankrupt but was named as an unindicted co-conspirator.

"The health of our miners matters to Western Kentucky communities and those sworn to protect them," Coleman said. "When companies and their senior officials are prepared to disregard the law and put miners at risk, they should also be prepared to face federal prosecutors."

He said the indicted officials cheated and lied while avoiding the costs of ventilation and production controls, putting the company's bottom line above the health and safety of hundreds of mine workers.

Mike Wilson developed black lung disease while working in coal mines in Kentucky. Credit: Courtesy of Mike WilsonMike Wilson developed black lung disease while working in coal mines in Kentucky. Credit: James Bruggers/ICN

Mike Wilson developed black lung disease while working in coal mines in Kentucky. Credit: James Bruggers/ICN

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The indictments were announced amid a regional resurgence of black lung, long the scourge of an industry noted for its severe health and safety risks to its workers. They also came as the Trump administration has pledged to do whatever it can to boost the ailing coal industry, which has been undercut economically by natural gas and, increasingly, by clean renewable energy sources like solar and wind.

"Armstrong should have done what they were supposed to do by the law," Wilson told InsideClimate News, adding that he expects his own black lung to cut years from his life. "I wake up all during the night, coughing and choking," he said. "I can't breathe.

"I can't hardly walk to the mailbox now," he said.

Charges of Lying on Mine Safety Tests

Coal workers' pneumoconiosis, commonly known as black lung disease or simply black lung, is caused by long-term exposure to coal dust.

U.S. Department of Justice officials on Wednesday said the charges were brought against eight former supervisory and safety officials who they said used "deceit, trickery and dishonest means" to violate mine safety rules at the Parkway Mine in Muhlenberg County and the Kronos Mine in Ohio County, both in the western Kentucky coalfield. The grand jury also charged the company officials with lying about test results in the dustiest and most dangerous job assignments in the mines.

Here's some of what the grand jury accused the officials of:

Removing dust testing devices early in miners' shifts and placing the monitors in less dusty areas or in cleaner air.

Improperly sending miners without dust testing devices to places where the monitors were required.

Ordering monitors to be run in clean air before and after shifts to skew their results.

Attorneys for the eight people named in the indictments could not immediately be located for comment. The indictments carry a potential five year prison sentence and up to $250,000 in fines.

Kentucky attorney Tony Oppegard, a national expert on mine safety, said problems at the mines came to public attention after Wilson and two other miners came to him with complaints about four years ago. Their stories were published in 2014 in the Huffington Post, and Oppegard said that he sent that article to the Justice Department and that the miners testified before the grand jury. He represented the workers in related employment discrimination cases that he said have since been resolved.

Inside the Mine, 'It Was All About Production'

Brandon Shemwell, 38, is another Oppegard client who worked for Armstrong for about nine years and also reported safety violation to authorities. He's a third-generation coal miner who said he does not have black lung but has seen it devastate family members and friends.

He described working in tight underground passageways in the mines, some so short he couldn't stand up straight, and he said the company skimped on using water to keep the dust down.

Sometimes, he said, "you couldn't even see your hands in front of you."

"It was all about production, getting a ton out, more money to make," said Shemwell, who is now a truck driver. The company was "paying my bills, but when they come to safety, they were not at the top of the list at all."

Oppegard said he believes his clients are pleased by the indictments but frustrated that it took so long for criminal charges to be filed. He speculated that there could be other indictments if the Justice Department puts pressure on those who were charged Wednesday to cooperate with them and flip on their superiors.

"That's always the goal," said Coleman, the U.S. attorney. He declined to say more about the potential for more charges in the case.

Black Lung Cases Are Rising Yet Again

With black lung, it wasn't supposed to be this way anymore.

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Congress in 1969 passed the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, making it national policy vanquish the disease. Later amended in 1977, It ordered safety standards, equipment and training, as well as benefits to help miners with the disease.

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Black lung has been one of the most direct and personal consequences of the nation's dependence on coal, which is a major source of heat-trapping gases blamed for contributing to global warming. Since 1968, the disease has killed more than 76,000 miners and resulted in more than $45 billion in compensation benefits to coal miners disabled by black lung and their survivors.

Black Lung Disease: A Primer

graPHIC]

Black lung rates had dropped from 1970 to 2010, from about 35 percent of longtime miners to about 5 percent, but they have since been on the rise, according to a new report from the National Academy of Sciences. More recently, doctors have seen pockets of more aggressive forms of the disease at hot spots in Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia.

"The whole purpose [of the coal mine act] was to say a miner could work a 30-year career and when they retire, they could still lead a normal live," said Oppegard, who has worked in mine safety for both the federal government and state of Kentucky. "But we're actually going backward now, with all the new hot spots they are finding."

Why black lung is surging again remains unclear, but the National Academies study said it could be in part because the remaining coal seams are smaller and miners are cutting into more rock, creating a more dangerous mix of dust.

The Battles for Benefits—and for Safety Rules

In 2014, MSHA issued a rule that lowered allowable exposure limits for respirable coal mine dust and required the use of different monitoring technology aimed at reducing mine workers' dust exposure. But the National Academies report said even that rule won't be enough to protect miners. It called for a "fundamental shift ... in the way mine operators" work to eliminate black lung.

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The Trump administration last year said it was reconsidering that 2014 rule as part of its effort to roll back regulations.

On July 6, MSHA announced a new study of the Obama-era rule. But at the same time, Assistant Secretary David G. Zatezalo, a former miner and coal industry executive, insisted "MSHA has no intention of rolling back the protections afforded to coal miners under the final dust rule."

Even if a miner gets diagnosed with black lung disease, there's no guarantee he or she will receive benefits they are entitled to under federal law.

InsideClimate News, as part of it Choke Hold series, described how some companies have engaged high-profile law firms that in turn employ a cadre of doctors, setting the stage for protracted battles of conflicting medical opinions. Miners, meanwhile, are often overmatched because few lawyers will take their cases. Attorneys are barred from charging plaintiffs fees, meaning they receive modest compensation, and only if they win.

For his part, Wilson, the Kentucky miner with black lung, said he's accepted his situation. "We had a good life, some great kids, great grandkids and we have great great-grandkids.

"I am living just one day at a time."

PUBLISHED UNDER:

COAL REGULATION

HEALTH NATIONAL ENVIRONMENT REPORTING NETWORK - SOUTHEAST

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James Bruggers

James Bruggers covers the U.S. Southeast, part of ICN's National Environment Reporting Network. He came to InsideClimate News in May 2018 from Louisville's Courier Journal, where he covered energy and the environment for more than 18 years. He has also worked as a correspondent for USA Today and was a member of the USA Today Network environment team. Before moving to Kentucky, Bruggers worked as a journalist in Montana, Alaska, Washington and California, covering a variety of issues including the environment.  Bruggers' work has won numerous recognitions, including the National Press Foundation's Thomas Stokes Award for energy reporting.  He served on the board of directors of the Society of Environmental Journalists for 13 years, including two years as president. He lives in Louisville with his wife, Christine Bruggers, and their cat, Lucy.

James can be reached at james.bruggers@insideclimatenews.org.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11072018/kentucky-coal-mining-black-lung-disease-armstrong-indictments-parkway-kronos-mine-safety-health

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https://wamu.org/story/18/04/01/kentucky-lawmakers-limit-black-lung-claims-reviews-despite-epidemic/

am univ

measure signed into law in Kentucky this past week would prevent federally-certified radiologists from judging X-rays in state black lung compensation claims, leaving diagnoses of the disease mostly to physicians who typically work for coal companies.

The new law requires that only pulmonologists — doctors who specialize in the lungs and respiratory system — assess diagnostic black lung X-rays when state black lung claims are filed.

Up until now, radiologists, who work in evaluating all types of X-rays and other diagnostic images, had been allowed to diagnose the disease as well.

Just six pulmonologists in Kentucky have the federal certification to read black lung X-rays and four of them routinely are hired by coal companies or their insurers, according to an NPR review of federal black lung cases.

The two remaining pulmonologists have generally assessed X-rays on behalf of coal miners but one is semi-retired and his federal certification expires June 1.

Among the radiologists excluded by the law is Dr. Brandon Crum, who helped expose the biggest clusters ever documented of complicated black lung, the advanced stage of the fatal disease that strikes coal miners.

“I do believe the coal industry is writing this bill to exclude certain doctors that they don’t like,” said Phillip Wheeler, an attorney in Pikeville, Ky., who represents coal miners seeking state black lung benefits.

Experts in reading X-rays

The changes are part of sweeping reforms to Kentucky workers’ compensation law, known as House Bill 2. Workers’ comp provides medical and wage replacement benefits for miners suffering from black lung.

Dr. Crum is the most visible of the excluded radiologists. His clinic in Coal Run Village, Ky., was the focus of a 2016 study by epidemiologists from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). They verified 60 cases of complicated black lung that had been diagnosed in a period of about 20 months in 2015 and 2016.

NIOSH had previously reported 99 cases nationwide over a five-year period.

At the same time, NPR and Ohio Valley ReSource reported nearly 1,000 cases across central Appalachia, prompting NIOSH epidemiologists to declare it the worst epidemic of complicated black lung they’d ever seen. Our ongoing survey of black lung clinics and law offices has the current count of advanced black lung diagnoses at more than 2,200 since 2010.

“Throughout the United States, I know of nowhere where radiologists are taken completely out of the evaluation for potential black lung disease,” Dr. Crum said. “That’s what we’re primarily trained in.”

Physicians who read chest X-rays for work-related diseases like black lung are known as “B readers” and are certified by NIOSH for both federal and state compensation claims. B readers do not specifically have to be pulmonologists or radiologists, though they can be both.

Radiologists, on the other hand, focus entirely on reading multiple types of X-rays and other diagnostic images.

The law also bars out-of-state radiologists who are both NIOSH-certified B readers and medically-licensed in Kentucky. That includes Dr. Kathleen DePonte, a radiologist in Norton, Va., who has read more than 100,000 black lung X-rays in the past 30 years.

“It is curious to me that the legislators feel that the pulmonologist is more qualified to interpret a chest radiograph than a radiologist is,” Dr. DePonte said.

“This is primarily what radiologists do. It is radiologists who receive all the special training in reading X-rays and other imaging.”

Dr. Edward Petsonk, a pulmonologist at West Virginia University with decades of experience and research focused on black lung, points to a 1999 report of pass-fail statistics for physicians taking the NIOSH B reader examination. Two-thirds of the radiologists passed, while the success rate for pulmonologists was 54 percent.

Relying on the expertise of industry

Radiologists, pulmonologists and other physicians don’t necessarily read X-rays the same way. Those who work for coal companies tend to be conservative in assessing black lung because the coal companies or their insurers pay black lung benefits. Those reading X-rays on behalf of coal miners are often accused of being too liberal in their assessments.

Judges often decide which assessments count most.

This seemed to frustrate Rep. Adam Koenig, a Republican from Erlanger and the primary sponsor of the changes in the law.

During the House floor debate on the measure, Koenig said one B reader finds black lung 41 percent of the time while another’s rate is 91 percent.

“Obviously we do not have a standardized process so we are trying to standardize it,” Koenig said. “No one here is trying to deny anyone who does that work from getting their black lung claims.”

That’s precisely what the new law will do, argued Rep. Angie Hatton, a Democrat from Whitesburg.

“When we’re finding increased amounts of this illness it seems to me that this is when they need us the most,” Hatton said. “Why are we making it tougher for them to prove their illness?”

In an interview with NPR,Koenig said he “relied on the expertise of those who understand the issue — the industry, coal companies and attorneys.”

He’d heard “anecdotal stories,” he said, about lung cancer being misdiagnosed as black lung.

Early stages of lung cancer and black lung can leave similar masses on lungs, according to West Virginia University’s Dr. Petsonk.

But Dr. Petsonk also noted that coal miners exposed to silica dust “are at an increased risk of lung cancer. They do get lung cancer. Silica is a carcinogen.”

A miner reacts

Former coal miner William McCool believes he would have been denied state black lung benefits if the new law had been in place when he applied for compensation.

“It’d be pretty much impossible,” McCool said. “I’ve had lung doctors tell me I don’t have black lung.”

McCool said it took two years to win his state claim because the doctors working on behalf of a coal company were conservative in assessing his disease. But the 64-year-old from Letcher County ultimately prevailed and has been diagnosed with advanced disease.

The federal black lung compensation program continues to rely on all NIOSH-certified B readers, whether they are pulmonologists, radiologists or other physicians. But seeking federal benefits instead of state workers’ compensation is not necessarily an easy option.

Dueling assessments in the federal system mean that some miners have waited more than a decade for decisions on federal benefits. Some die before receiving them. State benefits have traditionally been quicker and more generous to miners.

That seems to be changing, said Evan Smith, an attorney at the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center in Whitesburg.

Smith said the new state law “keeps Kentucky coal miners from using highly qualified and reliable experts to prove their state black lung claims [and] looks like just another step in the race to the bottom to gut worker protections.”

Koenig insisted that’s not the case.

“All we’re doing is making sure that qualified doctors are making these determinations,” Koenig said. “And if this process doesn’t work, I’ll be the first in line to figure out how to do it better.”

Copyright 2018 NPR

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fark --> read less, know more TM --> rating

http://www.newser.com/story/259638/in-coal-country-a-slow-rolling-disaster.html

– In what one epidemiologist calls a "slow-rolling disaster," a new set of studies presented at an American Thoracic Society conference this week offered glum news for coal miners. Per NPR, more Appalachian miners are plagued by both early- and late-stage pneumoconiosis, or "black lung disease," than previous research suggested. Sifting through nearly 50 years of federal benefit claims linked to the respiratory illness caused by inhaled coal mine dust, Kirsten Almberg and Robert Cohen, co-authors of one study, found more than 4,600 cases of progressive massive fibrosis (the most severe stage of the illness), with more than 50% of them taking place over the past 16 years. And David Blackley, a scientist at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which has conducted the government tracking program, says his initiative has recently spotted more early stage black lung as well.

"It's not that we're discovering a new disease," Cohen tells NPR. "We're seeing a resurgence of a disease that should have been eradicated." One study cited at the ATS meeting noted miners with simple black lung continued to see deteriorating lung function after they ceased going into the mines, meaning they may eventually get PMF. That study also noted a growing number of lung transplants in PMF patients. Why the numbers have been so underreported: Previous NIOSH studies have relied on voluntary testing by working miners only, with about 60% of miners never getting diagnostic X-rays. Newer research also looked at black lung clinics. A 2016 CDC study backs up claims of a PMF resurgence. "We've gone from having nearly eradicated PMF in the mid-1990s to the highest concentration of cases that anyone has ever seen," a NIOSH epidemiologist recently told NPR. (More bad news for miners in Kentucky.)

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NEWSER) – Kentucky miners with possible black lung disease, bad news—you may have less chance of getting state compensation, NPR reports. That's because Kentucky lawmakers just passed House Bill 2, which keeps federally approved radiologists from diagnosing the disease and leaves it mostly to doctors often employed by coal companies. "Throughout the United States, I know of nowhere where radiologists are taken completely out of the evaluation for potential black lung disease," says Brandon Crum, a radiologist who's being excluded. "That's what we're primarily trained in." Kentucky will only allow its federally certified pulmonologists to read those X-rays; the state has six, four of whom are typically hired by coal companies, and one is partly retired.

Apparently radiologists tend to side with coal miners and diagnose them with black lung, while Kentucky's pulmonologists diagnose more conservatively. "Obviously we do not have a standardized process so we are trying to standardize it," says Rep. Adam Koenig, a Republican. But critics say House Bill 2 simply sides with coal companies as black lung is becoming more common. A recent study found that Central Appalachia is suffering from a historic cluster of the disease,which is caused by dust inhalation while coal mining, the Lexington Herald Leader reports. New rules are designed to limit permissible mine dust, but many miners worked in the bad old days and are getting sick now. "It's shocking and it shouldn’t be happening," says an author of the study.

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https://www.ecowatch.com/black-lung-epidemic-2538494787.html

New Black Lung Epidemic Emerging in Coal Country

In a study released this month by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), federal researchers identified more than 400 cases of complicated black lung in three clinics in southwestern Virginia between 2013 and 2017—the largest cluster ever reported.

However, the actual number of cases is likely much, much higher as the government analysis relied on self-reporting. An ongoing investigation from NPR has counted nearly 2,000 cases diagnosed since 2010 across Appalachia.

NPR investigative reporter Howard Berkes, who has been closely following the epidemic explained to Pittsburgh's NPR news station:

"In the study that NIOSH just produced, they looked at three clinics in southwestern Virginia which serves coal miners from Virginia, Kentucky and West Virginia. And they identified and confirmed 416 cases of the disease in the previous few years. The study ended about a year ago. That's an astonishing number. NIOSH itself in its own accounting of that disease, found less than 100 cases in the same timeframe nationwide. And here in just three clinics in southwestern Virginia, there are four times as many cases. NPR has been surveying black lung clinics across Appalachia, and our count is up close to two thousand cases in the same timeframe that NIOSH had previously identified only 99. NIOSH itself now recognizes that this as the worst cluster of this disease ever documented. NIOSH has referred to it as one of the worst industrial workplace disasters in American history. It also marks what is a sharp increase in the disease from the 1990s, when researchers believed that it might actually become extinct."

Black lung disease, also known as coal workers' pneumoconiosis, comes from exposure to coal mine dust. Ever since the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, which was passed in response to the deaths of 78 miners in West Virginia and implemented stricter safety standards, cases had been declining and virtually eradicated by the 1990s....

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07092017/coal-company-fights-black-lung-medical-benefits-appalachian-miner

WISE, Virginia—Retired coal miner Bethel Brock proudly shows the vegetable garden where he grows potatoes, onions, corn, butter beans and other greens for the dinner table. He's in that patch nearly every day hoeing, shoveling—and struggling just to breathe.

Brock, a soft-spoken 77-year-old, has black lung disease from decades working in the coal fields of Virginia.

When his chest constricts and he becomes so winded that he can no longer stand, he slowly folds his body like a collapsing accordion, feeling more dread than discomfort.

"I have to stop right where I am and sit in the dirt," he said. "It feels like I'm suffocating."

Brock was diagnosed in 1982 with the early stages of black lung, a progressive illness common in coal miners. It eventually robs the lungs of the ability to hold air. In 2003, he began battling the Westmoreland CoalCompany, its insurance carrier and their legion of lawyers and doctors for black lung benefits.   

The company successfully fought him 10 times by maintaining he is not seriously stricken with the incapacitating disease despite nearly two dozen findings to the contrary by his doctors—and one by a doctor hired by the company, which it did not disclose to a ...

Earlier this year, it looked as though Brock would finally win when the examiner ruled him eligible for benefits. But several months later, she inexplicably reopened the case and reversed herself on a technicality: The latest X-ray documenting the progress of his disease hadn't been stamped with the date it was taken. Once again Brock had lost in a system, created by federal law, designed to be adversarial and seemingly tilted in favor of industry.

But when InsideClimate News began asking questions, there was yet another surprising development: A supervisor decided the latest decision was "in error" and notified Brock he would be getting benefits after all. A U.S. Department of Labor spokeswoman then asked if ICN would be changing the focus of this story about the black lung benefits system.

Jennifer Grafton, Westmoreland's chief administrative and legal officer, said she was bound by privacy issues and could not talk about Brock's case. Colleen Smalley, the district director who overruled the examiner, refused to answer questions and hung up on a reporter.

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https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/trump-brings-back-coal-miner-jobs-deaths-soar

Newsweek

Coal miner Rodney Osborne was towards the end of a double shift at the Gateway Eagle Mine in West Virginia in June when the 32-year-old was crushed to death by a rotating drill. A subsequent investigation revealed that Osborne, who had been working at the Boone County mine for just five months, had not received adequate safety training on the device.

The state's junior senator, Shelley Moore Capito, said she was heartbroken by the news of Osborne's death, then reminded her constituents that "West Virginia coal miners like Rodney selflessly put so much on the line to ... power our state."

Osborne was not the only miner who paid the ultimate price. In all, 15 miners died since President Donald Trump took office in 2017—up from eight in all of 2016.

This is the dirty secret of Trump’s much-touted effort to help the coal industry. The president has been quick to celebrate the 771 workers that were hired in 2017, but the administration's push to support the dirtiest of fossil fuels has been accompanied by a surge in deaths of the workers who procure it. The 2017 death toll was the highest since 2014—when there were roughly 60,000 more miners at work in America.

Mining advocates put some of the blame on the president, whose support for mine owners has led to relaxed safety enforcement, scores of inexperienced new miners and inconsistent commitment to training programs and courses. In the meantime,  Republicans in the House want to cut mine safety budgets further, and Trump, who says he supports coal miners, has been silent on a Senate bill that would shore up miners' pensions.

“When you look at the Trump administration policies and his ratcheting back of regulations ... this administration has no moral compass about ethics,” said Joe Main, who ran the Mine Safety and Health Administration under President Barack Obama. “Companies now think we have a less aggressive sheriff in town.”

Trump’s support for coal is part of a larger economic vision of deregulation—one that he says is responsible for the stock market’s recent boom and higher gross domestic product.

“The stock market is way up (because) we took off restrictions and we took off regulations,” he said on January 16.

But for coal miners, those restrictions and regulations can be the difference between life and death.

A majority of the 15 victims were new to their job site and seven deaths involved miners with one year or less experience at the mine where they died, data show.

“There’s been a whole new generation of people hired into coal industry, younger workers who haven’t had the benefit of enough training,” said Phil Smith, spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America. “But companies are resistant to taking time to take them off production to train them.”

The results can be deadly—and not only for new workers.

In May, Luches “Big Lou” Rosser, 44, was traveling on an electric locomotive deep in a West Virginia mine when his head hit a steel beam, killing him. The official investigation into his death found that Rosser, a husband and father of three, hadn’t been properly trained on the machine. He knew how it worked, but was never briefed on safety procedures.

“Showing someone how to push a button isn’t a training,” said Smith.

In July, Andrew Oxenrider, a 28-year-old with seven years on the job, exited his Caterpillar D9L bulldozer on the slope of a refuse bank. Oxenrider had not been trained in proper parking procedures for that model, and the bulldozer rolled backwards, killing him before falling to the bottom of the embankment.

And then there's the case of Osborne, who disabled his drilling machine's emergency shutoff system so he could make a minor alignment adjustment—only to get pinned between the cutter head and the coal seam, suffering "fatal crushing injuries," state investigators revealed.

State officials issued seven citations to Rockwell Mining, including two that carry a $10,000 fine. But so far, the Trump administration's mine safety agency has only recommended education.

Coal mining is inherently dangerous, with zero margin for error even under the best conditions. The average height of a mine tunnel is about three and a half feet, so miners crawl or duck-walk while avoiding big, mobile electrical equipment. Even a small lapse in safety can be catastrophic.

“I have been to too many mine explosions and funerals,” said West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat. “Too many miners have died for us to get to where we are today. We can not go backwards on safety.”

Last year’s death count suggests a step back. For the first seven months of the Trump administration, the top position at MSHA remained vacant. Congressional aide and White House adviser Wayne Palmer was finally put in charge of the agency in late August, but he had no experience in mining or mine safety.

Under Palmer's oversight,  MSHA proposed changing language about when safety inspections must be done at metal and non-metal mines. Instead of mandating the inspection before laborers enter a mine, operators could do the check "as miners begin their work," a wording that allows mine owners to start a shift before an inspection, putting miners in potentially dangerous situations.

The National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association, an industry group that spent $300,000 to lobby for the rule change and featured former Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski as the keynote speaker at its annual convention, was pleased with the new language, writing that "it appears that MSHA is willing to listen to the industry."

In the fall, Trump finally appointed David Zatezalo,a retired coal mining executive, to run the Mine Safety and Health Administration, but Zatezalo has a questionable commitment to miners’ welfare, advocates say.

His Rhino Eastern Eagle mine in West Virginia, for example, was hit with multiple violations in 2010 and 2011. All together, Rhino mines have been issued more than $2.1 million in fines for 162 workplace safety or health violations since 2000.

Now Zatezalo runs an agency charged with creating training initiatives, monitoring accidents, and, most important, carrying out safety inspections at mines several times a year. Critics say he is a pawn of industry.

“He’s a former coal operator, he’s not a mine safety advocate,” said Tony Oppegard, a mine safety lawyer.

This week, Zatezalo told Newsweekthat the Trump Administration is committed to the health and safety of America’s miners. "At MSHA, our focus is on ensuring that every miner is able to return safely to their loved ones at the end of every shift," he said. "To ensure the health and safety of miners, MSHA will continue to conduct inspections, and vigorously emphasize safety enforcement, education and training."

Such inspections and training are mandated by federal laws, but miner advocates are not convinced that Zatezalo will aggressively enforce them.

“[Zatezalo] might call the district manager in Barbourville, Kentucky and tell them how he wants the agency to run,” said Oppegard. “Influential mine operators might also call MSHA directly and say, ‘Your inspector is giving me a hard time,’ the head would then call the district manager and say, ‘Lay off.’ That kind of stuff happens. It really does.”

Main, the former MSHA director, said it is likely to get worse.

“If the perception of the industry is these guys are backing off, it won’t play out well for safety,” he said. “Word gets around the industry, and you know what’s going to happen there.”

Smith already sees alarming changes at MSHA, such as emphasizing a more-lenient safety check system called “compliance assistance," which was a key program under President George W. Bush. If a compliance assistant visits a mine and notices a safety or health violation, he or she does not have the authority to issue a citation or fine, the way an official inspector would.

They’re essentially tourists in a mine, said Smith.

If such assistants see “something going on in a mine that’s bad or wrong, they can only ask the company to fix it,” he added. “The company can easily say, ‘No we don’t think it’s a problem’ and that’s the end of it. There’s no enforcement.”

MSHA responded to the recent surge in deaths by increasing the size of its compliance assistance plan, a voluntary program for mine operators. Advocates say compliance assistance is typically most popular with deregulation Republicans.

“You know one administration, a Democratic administration, is interested in enforcement and wants to do enforcement. And a Republican administration wants to do compliance assistance,” Celeste Monforton, a former MSHA official and occupational health researcher, told *Ohio Valley Resource* as mining deaths were on the rise last year.

MSHA still uses official inspectors to carry out its mandatory inspections of all underground mines four times a year and all surface mines twice a year, and compliance assistance programs existed under Democratic presidents, as well. But the Trump administration has further dulled its teeth.

In the past, for example, all compliance assistants were to be accompanied by miners' representatives, but that is no longer the case, Smith said.

Compliance assistance is “a complete waste of time,” added Oppegard. “You can directly link the reliance on this method of inspection with an increase in mining disasters and fatalities.”

Annual miner deaths did increase twice during the Bush administration and were higher than under his successor, Barack Obama, who, in 2009, brought total miner deaths down below 20 for the first time in American history.

Manchin expressed his own concerns, telling Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta in a letter in September that MSHA inspectors were being instructed to remove their Representative Status credentials. Without the credentials, inspectors are not allowed to issue violations or remove miners from unsafe conditions.

"By separating the MSHA inspector from his or her credentials, one is essentially removing the ability of that MSHA inspector to issue an order to remove miners from the unsafe area and issue a violation which, particularly in the event of an imminent danger, can prove perilous," Manchin wrote.

He also questioned why miners' representatives were no longer able to walk with compliance assistants. "This is particularly alarming because, no one is better suited to spot inconsistencies or unsafe conditions that the very people who work at the mine day in and day out," Manchin wrote.

In the midst of the current mine safety crisis, Congress has proposed to cut MSHA’s coal enforcement budget by $11 million or 7 percent in the next fiscal year, leaving the agency with its lowest budget since FY 2013. Trump originally proposed to leave MSHA’s budget largely untouched but to reduce staffing by 42 positions.

“The proposed budget cut is absolutely a move towards reducing the inspectors in the coal industry,” said Smith, adding that the plan will result in an agency staffed by “inexperienced inspectors.”

“It takes five years to take an inspector up to speed,” Main added. “These are things that are really important to the life of a miner.”

Main said he worries about long-term leadership trickling out of the agency. “I was struggling to keep the agency functioning with the budget we had. Any additional cuts would hamper its ability to keep working,” he said.

On-site injuries are only one aspect of the job. Sustained exposure to coal dust leads to a number of respiratory diseases, such as black lung disease, a progressive illness with no cure. More than 76,000 miners have died of black lung since 1968.

Last month, Trump announced that MSHA was reconsidering rules intended to protect miners from breathing in the dust that causes black lung. And in his first days as president, Trump eliminatedan Obama-era rule blocking coal companies from dumping waste into streams. Miner advocates say these rule changes and others are all about appeasing mine owners, not workers.

“They’re receiving a lot of complaints from coal operators that these rules are wasteful and useless, but that’s just false,” said Smith.

MSHA says it is still taking comments about these rules, which went into effect in 2014 and aim to lower the concentration of respirable coal mine dust in the air, but Oppegard believes there’s only one reason to revisit them: “To raise the amount of dust miners can breathe in up again or to create other loopholes where operators could violate the standard.”

Smith added that such air quality rules don't get in the way of industry profits and are simply necessary.

“All of these regulations exist because someone was killed at work,” he said. “All those laws and regulations are written in a dead miner’s blood.”

Manchin disagrees, claiming that there are just too many environmental rules. “Some of the stuff doesn’t make sense and makes it hard for people to do their job,” he said.

Manchin is most upset with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who he says refuses to fund the pensions of 117,000 retired coal miners and dependents, who are at risk of losing their retirement funds due to the declining coal industry.

A Senate bill has 21 co-sponsors, but McConnell won't move it and Trump hasn't pushed the issue, Manchin said.

“We’re not talking big numbers here,” said Manchin. “Most pensions top out at $500 or $600 each month.”

Manchin added that Trump has been a sympathetic ear on the issue, but has not acted. To Joe Main, that means Trump's rhetoric about caring for coal miners is empty.

“I don't think I’ve ever heard the president talk about this pension,” he said. “These are people who produced the energy for this country to grow, they’re owed healthcare and a darn pension.”

Trump’s efforts to prop up the coal industry are bucking decades of decline for the mineral, mostly due to a drop in global demand. Even with hundreds of new miners hired last year, the solar and wind industries still employed nearly three times as many people as the coal industry. Half of America’s coal-fired plants have shuttered since 2010 and since Trump took office at least 17 plants have announced they’ll be closing shop. Coal isn’t cost-competitive with cheaper natural gas and it faces new competition as the cost of renewable energy continues to decline.

Coal is a leading source of carbon emissions, and many nations are weaning themselves off the pollutant to fight climate change, even as officials in the United States deny some realities about global warming. Exports of coal fell 23 percent in 2015 and another 32 percent through the first half of 2016, though domestic production is slightly up, thanks to a growing economy under Trump.

“I’m the one that saved coal,” the president said in a year-end interview. “I’m the one that created jobs.”

But on the homefront, Trump’s call to end the “war on coal” appealed to his base: wealthy, anti-regulation industry leaders and blue-collar workers nostalgic for a past they likely never knew. Trump’s support for coal countered Hillary Clinton, who was widely misquoted during the campaign that she would intentionally “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

Trump carried eight of the top nine coal-mining states in the 2016 election

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