As of December 11, nine U.S. coal miners had died in accidents during 2018. That’s not a record-low year, but it’s certainly enormously better than it was in the 1980s, when the number was routinely above 100. Or a generation before that, when it was over 1,000.
The biggest reason that the number of miners killed is dropping is simply that the number of miners is dropping. When those 100 miners were dying in the 1980s, there were more than three times as many miners as there are now, when fewer than 50,000 people are employed as miners, and many of the most dangerous jobs are highly automated. That’s all good.
But the number of miners dying in accidents doesn’t represent the full cost of coal mining. There are other ways for a miner to be killed besides being crushed by a roof fall or burned in an explosion. And, as NPR reports, some of those ways may be even worse.
"Oh God," he gasped, as he spit up a crusty black substance with gray streaks, and then stared at the dead lung tissue staining the grass. Still coughing and breathing hard, Smith settled into a chair on his porch and clipped an oxygen tube to his nose.
That’s not an 80-year-old who spent a lifetime underground. That’s a young man with one decade in the mines, a man whose lungs are dying inch by horrible inch from progressive massive fibrosis, the worst form of black lung disease.
Black lung has been killing miners since there have been miners. However, federal regulations on coal-dust levels were supposed to have greatly decreased the incidence of this killer. And, in fact, this seemed to be the case, as reported numbers of the worst forms of black lung have been falling. However, those declining numbers actually mapped to regulations that forced miners to be examined by a handful of doctors, often ones with direct connections to coal companies. The result hasn’t been a sharp decline in disease. It’s been a sharp decline in reporting of disease.
A federal monitoring program reported just 99 cases of advanced black lung disease nationwide from 2011-2016. But NPR identified more than 2,000 coal miners suffering from the disease in the same time frame, and in just five Appalachian states.
Appalachian states are seeing a decline in incomes and employment from mining. But the costs associated with mining—environmental costs as well as healthcare costs—will linger for decades after the last mine is closed.
This isn’t something new. This isn’t just a Trump issue. This is the legacy of regulators who for decades have been closer to the mines than to the miners. Regulators knew that the miners were subject to excessive exposure. Legislators knew it too. But they did nothing about it—except make it worse.
This is what it means when business-friendly rules override safety and environmental standards.
"We're counting thousands of cases," he said. "Thousands and thousands and thousands of black lung cases. Thousands of cases of the most severe form of black lung. And we're not done counting yet."