Jeff Nesbit: Coal's Continuing Decline

[Eugene]

Source: New York Times

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Coal’s Continuing Decline

By JEFF NESBIT FEB. 19, 2018

Three signal flares went up for the American coal industry recently, all illuminating an inescapable conclusion: Despite President Trump’s campaign promise, coal-fired power is in trouble and in all likelihood won’t be reasserting itself in the United States. Nor should it.

The first signal, from the medical community, should give champions of “beautiful, clean coal” like Mr. Trump and his energy secretary, Rick Perry, pause. A research letter published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Feb. 6 said that health professionals in Appalachian coal country were now finding the highest levels of black lung disease in coal miners ever reported.

The Coal Workers’ Health Surveillance Program, administered by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, has offered regular chest radiographs for coal miners since 1970. By the late 1990s, black lung disease was “rarely identified” among miners participating in the program, researchers wrote. But a spike in cases in 2014, first reported by National Public Radio, prompted the federal agency to take a closer look at patients at three federally funded black lung clinics in southwest Virginia.

They were stunned by what they found. Black lung cases in Appalachia coal miners in those three clinics had skyrocketed. The disease was more severe. And coal miners were dying much younger now than they had been two decades ago.

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The reasons behind this dramatic rise are complicated, but according to an NPR investigation, it is most likely because miners are working longer hours and are exposed to deadlier silica dust from cutting into rock to extract coal from thinner, harder-to-reach seams. The days of mining for readily available coal are long gone. It’s more difficult, and seemingly more costly to miners’ health, to extract coal in Appalachia now.

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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/opinion/trump-coal-decline.html

[Wellstone ruled]

1. Another Deadly Nightmare being exposed.

And with mine safety virtually gone,this will only get much worse. Dig that Coal Trump.

[VMA131Marine]

2. There's no excuse for this

Miners should be wearing protective masks to filter out the dust before it enters their lungs. We've know for decades about the dangers of coal and silica dust to the lungs so it's absolutely unacceptable that miners continue to get sick from this.