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News Release

Black lung disease rates among U.S. coal miners have doubled in the last decade, according to new federal government data. Safety experts say the figures reveal a trouble reversal from a century of success in fighting the deadly disease. Earlier this week, NIOSH’s latest black lung study data during the National Coalition of Black Lung Respiratory Disease Clinics meeting in Wheeling. Ten years ago, about 4 percent of coal miners with 25 or more years of experience showed signs of black lung disease. But new X-ray data from 2005 and 2006 found about 9 percent of miners with 25 or more years working underground showed lung malfunctions that indicate black lung. Rates among miners with 20 to 24 years of experience also increased, from 2.5 percent to about 6 percent, over the same period, according to NIOSH data. Since NIOSH began its miners X-ray study program in 1970, black lung rates had consistently declined. A small increase occurred between 1995 and 2000, and the most recent data shows that its worsening. Black lung, or coal workers’ “pneumoconiosis”, is a weakening and often fatal lung disease caused by breathing coal dust. In 1969, Congress placed strict limits on airborne dust and ordered coal operators to take periodic tests inside mines. The law has reduced black lung among the nation’s coal miners. But, at least partly because of industry cheating on dust samples, the law has fallen far short of its goal of eliminating the disease. Between 1993 and 2002, nearly 2,300 West Virginia miners died of black lung. West Virginia recorded the highest age-adjusted black lung death rate nationwide during that period, according to NIOSH reports. In September 2006, a Centers for Disease Control study reported pockets where black lung disease was progressing rapidly, particularly in southwest Virginia and eastern Kentucky. Cohen said that new labor department data also shows a large number of miners who worked only after the passage of the federal coal-dust limit have contracted the most advanced form of black lung. The UMW is supporting legislation that would tighten the underground mine coal-dust standard from 2 milligrams of dust per cubic meter of air to 1 milligram per cubic meter.