August 24, 2018
press release from Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center.
WHITESBURG, KY — More than 100 coal miners and their family members, health care and legal professionals, and political representatives convened in Whitesburg, Kentucky on Thursday Aug. 23 for a town hall to discuss and voice concerns about the unprecedented number of miners with black lung disease.
“Black lung is not your grandpa’s disease,” Linda Adams of Virgie, Kentucky who lost both her husband and nephew to black lung, told attendees.
Research shows the deadly and incurable disease is currently at epidemic levels among coal miners and is afflicting more younger workers. It’s becoming less of a gamble for miners and more of a guarantee.
Both the severity and the prevalence of black lung are greater than ever before, underlined Dr. Cara Halldin, a lead scientist at the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH) studying the disease. According to a recent publication by researchers at NIOSH, 1 in 5 Central Appalachian (Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia) veteran miners have developed black lung.
“This isn’t plateauing, this isn’t slowing down… [it is a] true epidemic any way you want to look at it,” explained Dr. Brandon Crum, a radiologist and former miner from Pikeville, KY.
Retired coal miner Leonard Fleming explained the difficulty of living with the disease. “We all like to work. And most of us like to go fishing. Like to go hunting, like to go to a ball game every once in a while…but if you get black lung you can do none of that, absolutely none,” he said. “When you eliminate that out of your life, you’re taking most of your life away.”
The Black Lung Trust Fund, financed by an excise tax on coal, currently supports approximately 19,000 miners and their families. Federal assistance and medical reimbursements for miners with black lung will be threatened if Congress does not take action by the end of the year. In June, a Government Accountability Office report found that if the excise tax rate, which is set to decline at the end of 2018, is not raised or extended, then revenue will be insufficient to cover beneficiary payments and administrative costs starting in 2020. Though black lung is indisputably on the rise, the National Mining Association has spread false claims that it is declining and the trust fund can be sustained by a lesser excise tax.
Patty Amburgey, a member of the Southeast KY Black Lung Association, urged the audience to take action, “If we don’t speak up, we don’t stand up, we are going to lose something that means a lot to Eastern Kentucky miners.”
This local effort is part of a larger regional movement. The Town of Big Stone Gap, VA recently passed a resolution urging Congress to take action on the excise tax. Voices from the communities most affected by the disease are asking Congress to take action to assure that the coal industry does not evade its responsibility to support miners.
State Rep. Angie Hatton was in attendance and spoke about the importance of miners being able to fairly acquire benefits, and a representative of Congressman Hal Rogers was in attendance and offered to speak with impacted miners. The event was co-sponsored by the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center, Mountain Comprehensive Health Corporation, the Black Lung Association of Southeastern Kentucky, and the National Coalition of Black Lung and Respiratory Disease Clinics.
I ran cutting machine for years every inspector at every mine I worked at never once wrote up that cutting machine for no water on cutting head and chain , state or federal. This is why coal miners in ky. Have black lung ! THE VENTALATION AND DUST SUPPRESION LAWS WERE NOT INFORCED !