Black Lung Cases Hit 50-Year High as Miners Wait on Benefits

Pneumoconiosis cases among American coal miners have reached their highest level in half a century, exposing a stark gap between political support for the coal industry and the lived reality of workers left ill by it. Sick miners and their families say they are trapped in a bureaucratic maze while their health deteriorates, raising urgent questions about the adequacy of the federal black lung benefits program.

Josh Armes, 74, of Grundy, Virginia, spent 38 years underground in West Virginia and Virginia coalfields before retiring and receiving a diagnosis of coal workers' pneumoconiosis — a disease caused by prolonged inhalation of coal dust that permanently scars and destroys lung tissue. There is no cure. For miners like Armes, the benefit claims process has become a second ordeal layered on top of a debilitating illness.

Read more Trump Family Lands $620M Pentagon Deal as White House Backs AI Deregulation →

Coal workers' pneumoconiosis, commonly called black lung, was widely believed to be in long-term decline following landmark federal safety regulations enacted decades ago. The resurgence to a 50-year peak has alarmed pulmonologists and occupational health advocates, who point to more intensive mining methods that generate finer, more dangerous silica-laced dust as a likely factor compounding the risk for current and former miners.

The benefit delays underscore a broader tension in US energy and labor policy. While the current administration has voiced strong rhetorical backing for the coal industry, advocates for affected miners argue that support must extend beyond the mine mouth to the men and women who sacrificed their health underground. Critics of the system describe a claims process so slow and adversarial that some miners die before their cases are resolved — prompting the blunt question from frustrated claimants: "Do you have to be dead?"

Continue reading at Business | The Guardian.