The Sunday Story: Coal's deadly dust
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I'm a character, and this is a sunday story. In a journalist career, there is often a story or two that would just end up following you, like long after you fought your first peace far beyond just cover your beat. IT becomes a kind of calling. These are stories that push you to dig deeper and lean and closer with the hope that your reporting could help deliver justice to those suffer today on the show, the story that has followed, Howard burgess, Howard is a beloved, now retired, corresponded here in M. P. R, whose investigative reporting on com and safety and black lang these spans a decade since twenty twelve, Howard and his reporting partners have been talking to dozens of miners in abbot cha who suffer from black lung disease, reporting that has exposed the government failure to protect them.

The doctor says my lung started writing down and said, is harden dislcosures mpc pe, it's bad when you walk out. sad. I'll let error after you can eat them in new ones. Prince is trying to take a back and try show steps and heels. I, can you welcome a drive away, take me about you get a back in bin black and blood calm to the phone of almost .

throw this year how our burkas came out of retirement to pick up the investigation .

again .

we're gona dad from there is no cure for IT is a death and no one that's coming to you it's .

pretty hard to .

take however, joins us today to talk about was compelled him to return to the this story again and again and what's at stake as mine safety regulators try to do Better today. So how first of all, welcome to the podcast.

I've really appreciate being with you.

I I just want to a Better understand this disease. So when I think of a black LG disease, it's not something that I think of in asia with today. I'm thinking of the past, the industrial revolution, you know i'm not thinking twenty, twenty three.

You know it's actually still pretty common in coal country and epilogue to hear about dads and grandfather's, uncles, friends who mind coal and then suffered and died from black lang disease. IT was typically in old miners disease, and the death can be really horrific. The lungs slowly build up with fibrotic tissue. The affected portion of the lungs become hard, and eventually they no longer work, is often death by suffer cation.

I mean, IT sounds like A A terrible way to die. Has the government done anything to address this?

Back in one thousand and sixty nine, forty thousand coal miners in west Virginia staged a wildcat strike over blackland disease, and that prompted congress to enact a new mine safety law. IT put tough limits on exposure to cold dust, and IT made a big difference. The rate of black lung disease plunged ninety percent in the next couple of decades.

okay. So what prompted you to begin investigating black lung disease in twenty eleven? Like when you got started with all this.

actually the year before, in two thousand and ten, there was this terrible calamine explosion at the upper big branch mine in west Virginia. Twenty nine coal miners were killed. IT was catastrophic. Then dozens of mine rescuers, EMS and ambuLances for mobiles.

Control of.

This was the worst mine disaster in forty years. A year later, in two thousand and eleven, a report about the disaster was released and IT contained a one page side bar, and that side bar said that the autopsy es on the miners who were killed in the explosion revealed an extraordinary ly high rate of black lung disease. One of the miners who died in the explosion was named gary when corals, he was just thirty three years old at the time, and his father, whose also named gary and also was a coal miner, he told me this .

he had black LG via in a month for thirteen to fifteen years, and already considered him in black long. It's unbelieved. And not only here, I quite a few other agger gas and be a net Young H I called for.

So so the thing that is striking about this is because with black lung disease in the past, this was something that hit minors when they were in their sixties and seventies, like their later years in life, in in that image, that kind of comes to mind of older retired miners hooked up to oxygen tanks um after mining for thirty or or forty years right one of the shocking experiences .

we had right away was meeting coal miners who did not fit that description. They were far Younger when they were diagnosed and they got far sicker m were quickly this included a minor in mark machain. He was only forty years old when he was diagnosed. We went to his house in south west Virginia, and he held up in actually of his lungs in the light of his living room window.

You go from being a Normal to wear all that monday. You try to do something you used to do. You can do IT, and you're just even to catch your breath and you say, this is crazy.

You can't be this ban. And then you real couple must down road that IT can be. And you realize a year down road .

after that, what does mark mccowan mean by that?

Mark was forty seven years old when we interviewed him. He'd been living with the disease for seven years, and IT was getting worse and worse. So one of the things that he described is something we heard over and over and over again while interviewing dozens of coal miners with black lung disease. They talk about the simplest things that they can no longer do, like just being with their grandchildren.

So nobody, I go push you down for .

few minutes .

and he's not run little bit. He will run, but he wants me chasing. I am now.

Okay, I should give up a minute. I might have two minute, and I like some money every day, every day. Sometimes I make IT to the time. sometimes.

You were hearing at these heart reaching stories about how minor struggle with the disease. What did you do next? Like, did you have a hunch that these individual stories point IT to a much bigger trend?

I did have that hunch, and so did the black lung expert who were as shocked as gary when corals father. There was also another reporter who was thinking the same thing. Chris hb, at the center for public integrity, we teamed up and he did an analysis of government data that help prove a dramatic resurgence of the disease.

We found that the downtown trend had reversed, that the rate of the disease had sore. And actually a more recent study found that one in five working coal miners who've been tested for black lung, and that thousands of coal miners have signs of the disease. Now we also found one likely reason for this in the death, cade, since that law was passed in one thousand nine hundred and sixty nine, miners began working longer hours, including lots of overtime and .

six day weeks by the time has forty years old, that man, more coal. And most miners seen in a lifetime.

And in fact, we found that on average, coal miners were each working six hundred more hours a year. And there were something else that mark mcAllen and other miners talked about. The big coal seams were gone. The thinner coal seams that remained were still valuable, and they were embedded in rock.

Sometimes the o was reduce to us to inch thickness, and you have to stay with that two inches because you know that your costing, but the rest of what you need demand might be sold out. This is also .

something we heard repeatedly from the dozens of coal miners we interviewed .

everywhere I worked with. That matter where you went, you had rock. Probably twenty years that more rock and could go weren't hard to know. The same COO lift, the same COO property. I need to take rest of that with rock six and .

eight foot in appalachia. That rock contains courts. And when courts is ground up by mining machines, IT produces a dust that is easily inhaled and contained sharpen particles of silica, which is far more dangerous than cold us alone.

After the break, the silicon does that made black lang worse. And the chAllenge for Howard in his reporting partners in determining how much worse.

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We're back with the sunday's story, and we're talking with retired in P. R. Correspondent Howard burgess. Howard, I want to ask you about your motivation for continuing the reporting like you spent a year investigating that twenty ten my disaster and was Virginia.

You spend another year investigating and documenting a dramatic resurgence of black long for a lot of reporters that would have been enough like you had expose what was going on um you had been born witness to IT. You could have left IT there and moved on to other stories. And that's what usually happens. Like, why did you keep thinking about this?

The truth is, I asia, I did move on to other reporting, some of which also involved other aspects of combine safety. But you know, I met a lot of sick and dying coalminers while I was working on commines safety. I met a lot of crippled workers and their families.

I met a lot of loved ones of minors who were killed on the job. And I just came to believe that work should not be a decant, that coal miners and other workers deserve to go home every night, hole and a lie. And here's the thing, they were supposed to be protected.

This was an era of tougher mine safety loss and a regulatory system that was supposed to protect them. But clearly, IT wasn't working. There must have been something else going on.

Now, before the break, you mention silica, uh, this is a common mineral and rock. Can you talk more about IT? Like what's the connection with this, you know, surge in black LG, especially among Young miners?

All that rock that miners were cutting produced this silica dust. And silica is actually twenty times more toxic than coldest alone. And because IT shark IT can embed in lungs forever, every minor we talked to had a story about silicate.

The more I rocks, you had to go to do state work is like being in A A own photo. Smoke like .

you're .

set in a cloud black walking into a fox. Speed IT up constantly. We just didn't keep the dust down. Get enough.

These silica particles are invaders in the lung, and the lung tissue fights back. IT becomes thicker and harder as a tries to excell this foreign substance, fibrotic tissue builds up and builds up, and IT makes IT more and more difficult to be nodules form. And when they get larger and more of them form, the disease becomes far more serious. This is known as progressive massive y brosses or simply, it's called complicated black lung is incurable, it's fatal. And IT was once rare among Younger miners like mark mckeon.

So now you're you're on to silica and and you're looking at that, how how did you begin this part of the investigation of all things?

That was a text message in the summer of two thousand sixteen, my cell phone buzz. This was a text message from a very valuable source. And IT simply said this.

I've seen as many complicated black lung cases in the last month as i've seen in the last thirty years. Guys are really that sick. Something is up.

Of course, I had to verify this. And I thought about two kinds of places that would be witnessing a monumental escalation in cases if such a thing was actually happening. One, there are law firms that represent coal miners who are seeking state or federal black lang benefits.

Theyd have an increase in business and to the medical clinics that diagnose black lung and treat symptoms. And I quickly found that both were swapped with cases, especially in Virginia, kentucky and west Virginia, one clinic in particular, in eastern conduck, ky, had dozens of cases, including Younger miners who are getting very sick, very fast. I interviewed there one of the sickest miners i've ever met, mackey Brandon. He was just thirty nine years old when diagnosed, and he compared his situation to his family's history of black long. You can hear how hard IT is for him to breath.

Have probably be the first moon to be despair in the family.

And what he mean .

is bad for IT, actually this progressive and in this Better shape. And I don't get me wrong, they can't read, but they can stick the homework around and loose. A more are out, a more are good out of birth. He is a lot of pressure he might chest all times.

And like a lot of sick miners i've met, mckee also talked about his eventual fate and .

never been scared death. He no mother may be. It's just not seeing my kid to grow up. 我 if I had IT to do over， I would do in a deal here, patric took to provide from family. 什么 没事。

My godness that's difficult even hear um how hard he struggling just to talk but then he says he do IT all over again. I I think that's that will be hard for a lot of people to understand.

You know mining jobs have been the best jobs in the Hilton hollers of epileptic, the best pay, the best benefits. Minor sometimes have the best houses. They sometimes have the newest pickup trucks. There isn't usually anything else that compares or even comes close to what mining can .

provide these workers. So how many mckee, Brandon, ms. Were out there? How many cases are out there like this?

To begin to answer that question, I went to the clinic where mckee brannan was diagnosed, a radiologist, their name brand in chrome, especially trained to assess the chest x rays of coal miners.

I think the percentage of black lang they were seeing now here in central black is unplaced in the in any recorded data that I can find anywhere in this clinic where we're roughly around nine to ten percent complicated rate, which is around three times higher than even the house reported numbers.

Chrome was so shock. He approached epidemiologist at the national institute for occupational safety and health, which tracks black lang disease. He spoke with Scott leny, one of the nation's most prominent black lang researchers.

He told us that he was seen a lot of IT brilliant once disease, and IT was concerning to him. And I guess my initial thoughts was it's probably not true.

Why was epidemiologist got laney so skeptical?

Because lanes federal research agency, which has tested tens of thousands of working coal miners for black lun for decades, had counted and reported just ninety nine cases of complicated black lung nationwide in the previous five years, bRandy chrome had two thirds as many cases in less time at his small clinic in kentucky, leny wanted prove, so he went to chrome .

clinic and he agreed to show us some of the medical images. And we saw there for an entire day, one after another, after another. Looking at these chest, x raised the worst i've ever seen.

And I asked lining how he reacted.

what he was seeing or shock. I don't know how many other words to to use. I was really taken a back not only that these cases were legitimate, but just how severe they were.

IT wasn't just chromes clinic across the kentucky border in Virginia rn cars and manage three blackland clinics Operated by stone mountain health services. And he said he had more than six hundred cases in just three years.

I'm not an epidemiology or a scientist, a doctor. I just see the the results that comes through the doors and something is going on, something major going on.

So so how how could this happen? Like how could the agency that is responsible for counting the cases of this disease miss so much IT turned out .

there was nothing really nefarious going on. Remember that I said that line's agency, the national institute for occupational safety and health, or ni oh, tested working miners for blackland disease. That's its legal Mandate.

But fifty thousand coal miners have lost their jobs in the two thousand eleven as because coal plants have shut down and minds of closed, some of those miners went into the black lung legal and medical clinics to see if they might qualify for black LG benefits. So the clinics were testing laid off and retired miners who niosh was not testing. We survey clinics in Virginia, kentucky, west Virginia, ohio. In pensylvania. They diagnosed close to a thousand cases of complicated black lung, ten times the niosh.

I mean, that's a big difference. And I guess if they didn't really know how many people were sick, then they didn't even know to try to look for a cause of this rise, right?

That's right. If the official count was so low, then there wasn't anything major to be alarmed about. In fact, there was never direct regulation of silicon dusting coal mines.

So at this point, you know, and government officials are starting to learn that the official account is way off, and lots more miners have this complicated black long than was previously known. And you suspect that the problem may be silicon, because miners are, you know, these days, are cutting through so much rock to get to the coal and they're encountering silicon. But but how did you prove .

that we knew that the mine safety agency had been sampling for cold dust and silicon st. And we knew that the agency analyzed ed those samples. So in two thousand seventeen, I turned to two of my colleagues on the epr investigations team who are visits at analyzing complex sets of data that's Robert din koa and waging non.

And they obtain thirty years of sampling data going back to nineteen and eighty six. Now we cast a wider net and went to even more black lung clinics to get a more complete kind of cases. We were trying to definitively show how many dangerous silicate stic exposure had occurred, what caused them, what the minds safety agency did or not do in response, and how many more cases were out there .

when we come back, what all that data revealed about the deadly condition miners were facing.

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We're back with Howard workers talking about his decade long investigation into black lang disease among coal miners. Howard, in his team, analyze thirty years of data. I D, try to document the number of dangerous silicate st exposure.

So how? What did you find? Okay, stick with me .

here for minute because it's a lot of numbers. But IT shows how such important details were overlook. First, we documented another thousand cases of complicated black lang, with a total then of over two thousand cases since two thousand ten. Second, we documented twenty one thousand instances of over exposure to silicates since one thousand nine hundred eighty six exposure that exceeded the federal health standard. Third, we found that the agency's response to excessive silica desta exposures failed to lower the dust of safe levels close to nine thousand times. Fourth, we obtained government documents that showed that the mine safety agency had identified a cluster of advanced lung disease and coal miners back in nineteen ninety six, and officials at the time connected that cluster of disease to exposure to silicon st. They even sent out warnings to the mining industry, but nothing was done then or since to force protective action on silicon st.

So IT sounds like you had a lot of smoking guns here. Um more cases of disease, more evidence of this hidden epidemic, are enough excessive exposures to maybe show the cause of the epidemic and then of a failure by regulators to protect miners even when they knew about the danger. What kind of reaction did you get to that?

More shock, more horr and a rare acknowledged by a former top official with the mine safety agency so lest moon forten was a top aid in the agency during the clink administration in the one hundred and ninety we failed. Had we taken action at that time, I really believe that we would not be seeing the disease that we're seeing now. And having minors die at such Young ages from exposure happened twenty years ago. I mean, I don't know how you can reach any other conclusion. I mean, this is such a gross Frank example of regulatory failure.

wow. I mean, that is quite an emission and it's not Normally what you would hear from a regulator or former regulator. Um she's basically saying it's underived a the the mine safety and health administration is supposed to be protecting miners. So how do you account for this failure? Like what what were those officials doing instead?

For one thing, they didn't look at their own data. They also ignored repeated recommendations by ni oh, going back to nineteen seventy four, which called for a silica exposure limit that was twice as tough. That was also recommended by a special labor department commission on black lang in nineteen ninety six.

I, I, I wanted to ask you about how minors can be protected from just just like a the pandemic obviously told us all about in ninety five mask. I don't call miners use mask or or reservations for protection.

This is a subject we could talk a lot about. I'll discover you of the highlights. And IT starts with a fundamental principal in workplace safety, which is companies are supposed to provide first and foremost as safe working environment.

They're not supposed to be able to get away with having an unsafe environment, providing some kind of protection. Supplemental protection is called. And in this case, with coal miners were talking about masks or repeaters.

There's also a fraught history with the masks. Miners were issued in the past, including hundreds of lawsuits with settlements and multimillion dollar vertical. And minors did not really like wearing .

these masks. I would, with .

them .

and feel, sit there with their hand to you. But that gave you your art depend of breath. They're not going to stop one hundred percent. Their finer particles get through their filters.

Some of the count is hour for didn't have at all parent. Now there are respirators and helmets available today that are more effective at screening out dust, but miners complain that they can limit vision or hearing or both. That's not good in a dangerous work environment where is critical to clearly communicate with co workers and to see the movement of massive equipment around you.

Okay, so so mask are are not a perfect solution. What else can mining companies do to protect miners from dangerous?

Does so minds have massive fans that push through clean air that swept away cold and silica? This robust ventilation is one thing that works. If it's done right, mining machines also spray water as they cut into coal and rock that also stamped down dust.

If the spray are working right, the other thing mining companies can do is slow down the mining machines, which can result in less dust. They could choose not to mind the thin seems with so much rock. Of course, both of those options involve mining less coal and making less money.

So bring us up today that like we we now know the government didn't bother to look at his own data and and I have failed to act on recommendations for tougher limits on silicon aus, but they're finally doing that right. Well.

the mine safety and health administration is finally proposing to make the silica dust exposure limit twice as restrictive, and IT is proposing to directly regulate siliceous for the first time so that citations and fines are possible for exposing minors to dangerous levels of dust. But the proposal appears to be weak on oversight and enforcement, on making sure that coal companies actually follow the regulations and actually protect minors.

And the agency does not include in this proposed regulation some of the key trends about complicated black lung that he has overlooked in the past. It's not citing the data that shows thousands of continuing over exposure to silica dust. IT doesn't cite the actual numbers of miners who are sick and dying from the disease.

These numbers are important because when agencies propose a new regulation, they have to sell IT. They have to sell IT to the industry that's affected because they don't want to get sued and they don't want the industry to appeal to their friends and congress to try to block IT. And in fact, a house republican has already launched an attempt to block implementation of the new silk dest regulation.

Even others, not even a final version of the proposal. So it's critical to make the best case, but the proposed regulation undersells the potential benefits. The proposal predicts that the new regulation will save just sixty three coal miner lives and prevent just two hundred forty four cases of disease over sixty years. Our latest survey of black line clinics shows more than four thousand cases of disease in the last decade.

Has the mines safety agency responded to your recent reporting like I did? Officials explain why they left out those compelling.

They responded, but they did not explain. Instead, they said in a statement that they would now consider the actual number of diseased and dying miners. And they said, officials, they are deeply disturb by that.

Now this is actually a work in progress. The proposal is now want to review. A final regulation is likely months away, and we'll see if that actually incorporates what we've reported.

However, so I know you could probably talk all day and and probably longer about the details of the proposal and some of the other shortcomings, and listeners can find out more about that in your story on our website of in pr the org. But I wanna give back to the minors you've interviewed over the years um because that's what this is really about their lives are at stake a and I know that even with coal plant shutdowns and in minds closing, there will still be tens of thousands of workers mining coal for years to come so what have these miners left you with that the all these hours you spent with them and and all that you've learned in your reporting? What days with you?

I keep thinking about a minor named danny Smith who was a lot like mackey brand, one of the Youngest and sick cus i've met. Danny only work twelve years underground. He was diagnosed with complicated black lung at just age thirty nine.

And when we visited with him at his home in eastern kentucky in two thousand and eighteen, he was just trying to do something simple, mois lawn. But he had a hacking fit that forced him to stop. He bent over.

He started coffin so bad that he was spitting up what looked like crusted bits of black paper with red streets. Later, his respiratory therapies told us that that was dead lung tissue that he was crawling up. Danny was taking his polite, very hard.

It's adam and eight met at me at least the last two years. Then i'm now over. It's over. You know it's it's hard back and you know not know where you going to see have great heat and you're gonna ver say human and.

All the things that could kill me while I did worker rock files and all that stuff, you know, and I lived through all, and I found out years later than a black IT was out, Young and strong and style. And I took a bank of every one of the age creep day and know without you me. Will just keep IT.

Danny Smith was forty six years old when we spoke with them in two thousand and eighteen, and he showed me then the burial plot that he'd picked after himself in his family. Dani, i've been communicating since then, most recently by text message, because he says he doesn't feel strong enough to get through a phone conversation. He's being accessed now for a double lung transplant.

He has good days and bad days. In one text that he sent me recently, he said he would rather be poor and homeless than suffer what he's been going through, and knowing IT will only get worse. But he also wrote that he was grateful for the good life mining made possible for him and his family.

He has two daughters. He's immensely proud, one of pharmacy now and the other studying to be a physician's assistance in emergency room. Both were inspired by danny suffering from complicated black along. And I want to leave you with this. His older daughters, sydney, wrote and performed a song about her dad in his disease.

They can black gold and fear, but.

Food on our table and close on.

Then there's a scary is place there to be in the. Still win there.

Have been to the lord above me, 我的 man who is on the way。

Howard burgess, thank you for bringing us the voices of coal miners like daming Smith and his daughter said, dme, we wish them the best and hope you're reporting helps call minors get the protection that they need.

Thank you. I eh for spending so much time with me and this reporting, I really appreciate .

you about all the money they made or what they worthy. How to love you 给。

Take the money if you don't have to think about your next.

Howard burgess is a retired correspondent with the imperial investigations team, but once a correspondent, always a correspondent, he recently updated his investigations of severe black lung disease for public health watch, an independent, nonprofit investigative newsroom focused on public environmental and occupational health. You can find his latest reporting in this episode page at in P, R, dot, or slash up first.

This episode of the sunday story was produced by Justin, and our editor is genius mt. Magnetar is our engineer music in this episode from audio network blue dot sessions and ROM ten hour blue. The song you heard earlier is called homine and kentucky.

The musicians were arc kelman chis present, Tyler ball in sydney smith, how's latest reporting on black lang was edited by the morals at public health watch car mal an eric Peterson at mountain state spotlight in west Virginia, Justin hicks at louville public media and Allan segura and mountain state spotlight contributed to the reporting. Liana sim's ong is our provision producer, and irian a gucci is our executive producer. We'd love to hear from you.

Send us an email at the sunday story at M P. R. Dot org. I jasko up first is back tomorrow with all the news, you need to start a week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.

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