UMWA, Black Lung Association members meet with Warner

By Mike Still

In Kingsport Times News

The federal government needs to start enforcing mining health rules and shore up the black lung benefits system.

That was the message to Virginia U.S. Sen. Mark Warner during a Thursday meeting with the United Mine Workers of America top leadership and miner health advocates at the union’s Subdistrict 28 headquarters in Castlewood.

Union President Brian Samson and Secretary Treasurer Mike Phillippi joined National Black Lung Association Vice President Vonda Robinson, pulmonologist Dr. Brandon Crum, Stone Mountain Health Services black lung program director Brad Johnson, black lung benefits attorney Heith Reynolds and several miners and family members for the meeting with Warner.

Warner agreed with the panel’s concerns that a toughened silica dust exposure rule for mine operations across the U.S. passed in the final year of the Biden administration has been shunted aside by the Trump administration.

The rule would have put tighter limits on miners’ silica dust exposure as thinning coal seams mean more blasting through rock to reach those seams. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health’s studies of black lung cases have seen an increase in complicated black lung — the presence of both coal and silica dust — in affected miners.

Those studies also have shown that the ages of miners showing signs of complicated black lung are getting younger by the year, with many affected miners in their 30s and 40s.

Crum, who operates Kentucky-based Union Medical Clinic and its black lung evaluation and diagnosis program, collects study date for NIOSH in his role as clinic director and as a federally certified B-reader — a doctor who interprets medical imagery for black lung diagnoses.

At Union Medical Clinic, Crum told Warner, the complicated black lung incidence among 485 new patients there was one in 10, or 10%.

Johnson said the incidence of complicated black lung at the end of the most recent year ran at 14%.

“That’s just the numbers we’ve seen,” Johnson said. Crum and Johnson both said that they expect the age range of affected miners could get younger without enforcement of the rule.

The number of lung transplants for complicate black lung patients is doubling, Crum said, since that often is the only way to treat those miners.

With cuts to the federal Department of Labor and NIOSH, Crum said full funding of NIOSH is essential to curb complicated black lung rates.

NBLA’s Robinson said the system for processing miners’ and widows’ claims for black lung benefits has worked against claimants because mine operators — responsible for much of those benefit awards — still can appeal benefit claims after an award.

Pam Stacy, a miner’s widow, told Warner that she has been waiting two years for a decision on her appeal of a denied claim.

“Many families have walked the same road,” said Stacy. “We’re asking for fairness, dignity and support. My husband gave his strength and life to the mine. The least we can do is make sure his sacrifice means something.”

“We’ve got a president who put a coal operator in charge of MSHA,“ Robinson said. “The president says, ‘dig baby dig.’ Let’s make miners safe again.”

UMWA President Samson said the union has advocated for the 2024 silica rule for 16 years, adding that there is no legal basis not to implement the rule as passed in 2024.

Warner asked Phillippi about the impact of cuts to Department of Labor administrative judges and MSHA staff involved in the black lung claims process.

“It’s not the cuts,” said Phillippi. “Trump offered buyouts and didn’t replace them after they left.”

“At the end of the day, DOGE will cause more damage,” Warner said of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency and its cuts to MSHA, the Department of Labor and other government agencies. Robinson asked if a federal severance tax could be expanded to cover exported and domestic coal production at the coal mines. Warner said a mine-wide severance tax would be harder to establish than even a tax on coal exports.

Putting a tax on data centers — users of large amounts of electric production — might be an example of how to share the burden on black lung benefits since miners have and still contribute to the nation’s economy for decades.

Reynolds said another area to examine is how black lung disability is not listed as a disability for establishing Social Security disability benefits. When miners used to get black lung benefits, he said, miners were usually in their 50s and 60s and that made it less of an issue for Social Security disability determination.

“But now it’s a different situation,” Reynolds said, referring to the younger age range of complicated black lung victims.

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