A new federal rule is aimed at reducing coal miners’ exposure to silica dust, a leading cause of black lung disease (Getty Images).
A single line included in the proposed annual appropriations bill for the U.S. Department of Labor and other agencies could — if adopted by Congress later this year — halt the implementation of a newly finalized rule limiting the amount of silica dust miners are exposed to while working underground.
The inclusion of the language, advocates say, is a direct insult to and betrayal of the nation’s miners, who are being diagnosed with complicated black lung disease at higher rates and younger ages than ever before.
A subcommittee voted to advance the bill on Thursday to the full U.S. House Appropriations committee, where it is scheduled to be up for a vote on July 10 before moving to the full House. As it currently stands, the bill explicitly outlaws the use of any funding directed to the Department of Labor or the Mine Safety and Health Administration in fiscal year 2025 for the implementation of the first-of-its-kind MSHA rule.
“Inserting this into an appropriations bill shows how deeply unserious [some politicians] are about protecting workers,” said Quenton King, a federal legislative specialist for the nonprofit environmental advocacy group Appalachian Voices. “The [federal Mine Safety and Health Act] gives MSHA the right to do this. Stopping it now would be a terrible travesty for the thousands of coal miners who mine coal every day and who are being irreversibly harmed because of it.”
U.S. House subcommittee votes to defund enforcement of silica dust rule protecting miners
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 20% of coal miners in Central Appalachia are suffering from black lung — the highest rate detected for the disease in more than 25 years. One in 20 of those coal miners are living with the most severe form of the condition, and fatalities tied to black lung are steadily increasing in central Appalachia faster than the rest of the country.
Younger coal miners in the region are also being diagnosed with the disease at rates unseen by their predecessors due to a lack of easily accessible coal and an increase in the amount of silica-rich sandstone they have to dig through to reach what remains.
The federal rule to limit miners’ exposure to silica dust was finalized in April and most of it began to go into effect in June. The new rule — initially proposed in July 2023 — implements for the first time ever a separate exposure limit for silica dust in mines, cuts the maximum exposure limit to 50 micrograms per cubic meter for a full-shift and creates an “action level” for when exposure comes at 25 micrograms per cubic meter for a full shift. It also establishes uniform exposure monitoring and control requirements for mine operators to follow.
The rule’s implementation comes more than five decades after the federal government first recommended limiting silica exposure among workers based on a wide body of evidence and years after other industries adopted similar standards to enforce the exposure limits of silica.
“The government has failed to protect miners for 50 years, and arguably longer because we’ve known silicosis was killing hard rock miners in this country since the 1800s when the legend John Henry died drilling rock in Southern West Virginia,” said Sam Petsonk, a labor advocate and attorney who has represented numerous black lung patients.
“It’s inexcusable already that we’ve waited this long to implement this rule and now for [Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., who chairs the House subcommittee that advanced the bill] to sneak a rider into his appropriations bill to block the implementation of these protections? Well, it’s unconscionable, indefensible and frankly insulting to mining communities who are suffering,” Petsonk continued.
While Aderholt and others, largely Republicans, are attempting to stop the rule to protect coal miners, policies in several states incentivize coal companies to conduct mining operations in thin-seamed mines where silica-bearing minerals are more abundant and therefore cause more risk for the workers who mine them.
West Virginia is one of those states. Since 1997, under the thin-seam severance tax, any new underground mining operations that start where coal is extracted from seams 45 inches wide or less qualify for reduced severance tax rates.
“That means we are incentivizing coal companies through public subsidies to mine mineral preserves that would otherwise be uneconomic to produce. That’s what is causing these miners to go in and mine through several feet of sandstone to get to this coal, and that is what is making them sicker and sicker,” Petsonk said. “We’ve made a policy decision here to contort the market. To say with that that we won’t implement a scientifically long-implicated rule protecting against silicosis — it’s criminal.”
It’s unclear what success the proposed appropriations bill will have in front of the full House or the Senate, where it will eventually land for a vote. Throughout the legislative process, lawmakers will have the opportunity to amend the bill to remove or change the language that restricts the use of funds.
King said advocates will have their work cut out for them in the lead up to those votes. Most lawmakers who will end up voting on the bill in both the committees and full bodies of Congress don’t represent communities as heavily impacted by the consequences of coal mining as central Appalachia is. They’re unfamiliar with black lung, King said, and the havoc it wreaks within miner’s bodies and on both their families and their own lives.
“We are going to be working and strategizing to get impacted people — miners and their families — in front of [lawmakers] to show them what this looks like,” King said. “Most of the people on the labor subcommittee who voted [Thursday] to advance this bill aren’t in Appalachia; they’re voting on things they don’t understand. There’s going to be a lot of educating to show why this is bad and what black lung really is.”
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