The Cost of Delaying Black Lung Regulations

Do not ever conflate Big Coal with the miners who dig it. They are its victims, not its profiters.

TPM:

The Obama administration's spring edition of its regulatory agenda, which was released on Wednesday, included yet another delay to a rule it proposed more than two and a half years ago aimed at reducing miners' exposure to coal dust, the Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward Jr. reported.

The dust causes the irreversible and potentially deadly black lung disease, which has been on the rise in recent years. The rule would seek to tighten allowable levels of coal dust exposure, and include provisions for continuous personal dust monitors for miners.

I sincerely hope the people who made that decision did so in ignorance of what Black Lung really is. Because if they know, then they are moral monsters.

From the Herald:

Roger Cook, 57, has black lung even though he started his 32 years as an underground miner in 1978, well after the new prevention standards were put in place. He is among a growing number of Eastern Kentucky miners afflicted in recent years with black lung, reversing a decades-long decline of the torturous, incurable disease.

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