In 2016 when President Donald Trump was just a candidate running for President, there was a lot of talk about the coal industry. Coal was and is in decline. The decline is partially due to reduced coal use, and partially due to new technology. The old image of coal miners digging in a dark cave is a century out of date. The coal industry doesn’t work that way anymore. Unfortunately, the greatest scourge of the bad old days of coal mining has returned. Black Lung is back with a vengeance and is claiming the lives of American coal miners.
There is more coal in America than oil in the Middle East. From the 19th to the 20th century, cheap and plentiful coal allowed America to leapfrog the other great industrial powers of the world. Coal powered our factories and heated our homes. Later, when America switched to electric power, our power plants were powered by coal. Without our vast coal reserves, America could not have become the unquestioned superpower of the late 20th Century. Mining that coal, however, was a dirty business.
In the early 20th century you just had to find the right place to dig, and then send down the miners. Pumps kept out the water that regularly flooded the tunnels could also pump in the air that the miners needed. Improvements in geography and materials kept ever deeper tunnels from collapsing. The one thing that we couldn’t do, at least not at first, was to keep coal dust out of the air miners breathe. All that mining creates a lot of coal dust. Slowly but surely, that dust works it’s way deep into our lungs, permanently destroying delicate tissues.
If you’ve spent a lifetime as a coal miner, you know that once you notice the symptoms, you’re already dead. You might live for a decade or more, but you know that you will slowly… very slowly… suffocate. Miners can also die in a cave-in, a flood, an explosion, or even a pocket of poisonous gas. But those are quick deaths. Black lung is a horrifying way to go. For you, and your family.
In 1969, the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act was passed by Congress to protect the lives of miners and create a disability fund for Black Lung victims. But for many coal miners, it was far too late. Statistics showed that a third of coal miners who worked for 25 years or more had Black Lung.
Workers and coal mine owners both wanted an alternative. It came in the form of mountaintop clearing. This is just what it sounds like. Pick a mountain with coal and blow off the top of the mountain. This leaves a pit with coal seam running along the bottom. You then install a “dragline”, a giant steam shovel. It has a long arm, with a big scoop bucket at the end. You swing out the arm, then drop the bucket, and “drag” the bucket along the coal seam. The dragging process rips up the seam of coal, which goes into the bucket. The biggest draglines can scoop up 400 tons at a time. or comfortably fit 10 city buses. It’s a very, very big bucket.
That one dragline can excavate the entire mountain with as few as 6 workers. Compare this to underground mines that used to need hundreds or thousands of workers. It’s easy to understand why mountaintop clearing dominates the coal industry. But down below, technology has not stood still. Pickaxes have been replaced by “continuous miners“. These powerful machines grind away at the wall of a tunnel, ripping out the coal and grinding up the surrounding stone. While these machines can squeeze into cavities just 30 inches high, they can dig out more than 10 tons of rock wall a minute. And that may be a big part of the problem.
In 1969, the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act provided miners with equipment to protect them from the dangers lurking in the mines. New detectors could quickly identify pockets of gas, the supports that prevented mine collapse were regularly inspected, and workers were given respirators to filter coal dust out of the air. New Black Lung cases plunged. in 1970, before the new regulations were in place, nearly a third of miners that worked for more than 25 years in a mine had Black Lung. By the late 1990’s that dropped to just 4%. But in the 21st century, Black Lung is on the rise. However, the new cases are a bit different. Damaged tissues now contain as much silicone as coal dust. The new Black Lung is probably caused… or at least aggravated… by the new continuous mining equipment.
Mining is physically demanding. In the old days, most of what came off of the walls of a coal mine was coal. Continuous miners simply grind away at wherever the coal is most plentiful. A lot of the surrounding rocks get ground up too, and much of that rock is flint, which is turned into minute sharp fragments. These fragments settle into the lungs, something like asbestos. The mix of flint and coal may be more deadly than coal alone. The mine is supposed to suppress the dust in the mine, and then… if they choose to… miners can wear a respirator. But respirators are not comfortable. It’s harder to breathe, the mask is sometimes claustrophobic, and the respirator is one more thing to carry around. If continuous miners were not invented, many more (probably all) American coal mines would have closed. This technology kept underground mining alive, but it is now killing American miners.
We don’t know exactly how the increase in inhaled silicon has impacted miners because the medical data has been intentionally manipulated. Not by mine owners or insurance companies, but by the minder themselves. It seems incredible that miners choose to die from untreated Black Lung, but you need to understand their point of view. Most miners come from a family of coal miners. They’ve seen most of America’s mines close, and they see how few workers are left in the last mines (which are all on the edge of closing). When a miner feels the first symptoms of Black Lung (and they all know the symptoms), you’re already dead. There is no cure, and the last days are pretty horrifying. But your son, nephew, or niece might still be healthy and working in the mine. If you report your ailment, it could be the last straw that closes the mine, and EVERYONE loses their job.
In 2016 National Public Radio (NPR) began investigating Black Lung disease in Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Just the 11 clinics that provided data reported 962 new cases of Black Lung. That’s 10 times the officially reported nation-wide data. It’s easy to see why NPR believes that there are even more unreported cases out there. Privacy laws leave it up to coal miners to decide if they will report their illnesses (to their union or to mining companies).
By not reporting their illness, hundreds (possibly thousands) of Black Lung victims will not receive treatment. If this sounds far-fetched, take a look at this map of opioid overdose deaths. Notice the bright red colored section just West of the middle of the east coast (in parts of Virginia, Kentucky, Tennesse, and Ohio). That’s coal country. Are Black Lung victims self-medicating with illegal drugs? Are painkillers the only medication they can receive (or afford) without reporting their Black Lung? The high level of work-related injuries and the lack of doctors in this region is already assumed to be part of the addiction crisis, especially in West Virginia. No study has yet created to examine the relationship between painkillers and the outbreak of Black Lung.
While the medical community has yet to examine the outbreak, the legal community has already responded. Kentuck lawmakers have passed new regulations, requiring claims of Black Lung to be diagnosed ONLY by certified pulmonologists. According to NPR, ” 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”. Coal miners’ fears of discovery might be justified.
Coal mines need machines and people. But when people become problematic, mine owners will look to robots and Artificial Intelligence to take over more work. Fewer… if any… human workers will be needed. If that automation fails to sufficiently reduce costs, then the mine will close. Somewhere else, a new coal-rich mountaintop will be leveled.
Can Trump reverse 100 years of declining coal mine employment? Probably not. Even if he can, he might just increase the number of Black Lung victims. “Clean” coal and high tech coal solutions may be an answer for the coal industry, but not for the coal miner. Few of today’s experienced coal miners have the skills or the education for employment in “new” coal.
Washington could do much more good by dealing with the medical problems of coal miners. A new Black Lung Fund or clinics armed with the latest research could turn around the rise in Black Lung. Coal jobs, at least the coal jobs that these miners would qualify for, are probably gone forever. It’s too late to save the mines, but we just might still be able to save the miners!