Coal gets more costly

[RandomGuy]

Easy to get coal is gone. What is left requires cutting through a LOT more rock to get at, and that leads to silicate dust.

It may shock you to learn, but the coal companies skimp on safety to pad margins, and these men and women pay the price for that.



http://www.wkms.org/post/npr-continu...ced-black-lung

NPR's ongoing investigation of the advanced stage of the fatal lung disease that afflicts coal miners has identified an additional 1,000 cases in Appalachia.

That brings the NPR count of progressive massive fibrosis, the most serious stage of the disease known as black lung, to nearly 2,000 cases in the region, all of which were diagnosed since 2010.

In the same period, researchers at the National Ins ute for Occupational Safety and Health reported just 99 cases nationwide. NPR's count is now 20 times what had been considered the official tally of the advanced stage of disease.

NPR contacted black lung clinics, physicians and attorneys across the country. Seventeen in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia and Kentucky provided data. Their diagnoses of advanced disease have not been independently confirmed. But the actual occurrence of disease is likely higher because many clinics across the region and the country were unable to provide data and because others didn't have data for the full 2010-16 time period.

NIOSH is surveying clinics and has also found astonishing rates of disease, according to epidemiologist Scott Laney.

"There's a great deal of evidence ... that definitively demonstrates that we are in the midst of an epidemic of black lung disease in central Appalachia," Laney said Thursday in Morgantown, W.Va., during a presentation before a National Academy of Sciences committee investigating efforts to control the coal mine dust that causes the disease.

newer:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/a...se-appalachia/

[Fabbs]

[RandomGuy]

Funny thing is that jobs per unit of coal have fallen.

Coal is not the big employer it used to be.

Now.... a slowly dying industry. If it were really force to bear the full costs of its product, it would be almost gone by now.

[Fabbs]

Yep.
Don just sold out to get the vote.