As director of the New River Health Association Black Lung Clinic, Emery’s seen guys as young as 45 getting double lung transplants as disease rates soar among miners forced to dig through more rock filled with deadly silica to reach the remaining coal — far worse than the dust their grandfathers inhaled.
A rule approved last year by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration would cut the federal limit for allowable respirable crystalline silica dust exposure by half to help protect miners of all types nationwide from the current driving force of black lung and other illnesses.
But, now, it’s in jeopardy amid other Trump administration cutbacks and proposals targeting workers’ health and safety guardrails: Stuck in a politically charged environment that promotes industry, with lawmakers arguing to change it and the federal agency that wrote the rule not pushing to enforce it. Some angry retired miners with black lung are fighting back, demanding that Donald Trump honor promises he made to the people who voted him in.
I am very worried about the leopards' health right now. They're massively overeating, and getting very little exercise between meals. I hope the American people will have the sense to stop feeding themselves to them sometime next year.
But why would the "Steel City" have such good medical care? It turns out that for a while, steel worker unions were really powerful, and one of the main benefits the unions fought for was good health care for their members. Now the steel industry is long gone, but what remains is a great medical system that was essentially founded by those unions.
Moral of the story? If you're a worker in a dirty, dangerous industry, you can either vote for someone like Trump who will gut your healthcare and strip you of government protections, or you can form a union and get the protection you deserve.
It’s terrible that Trump is going all in on coal and oil while also cutting back on the regulations that keep these people safe. At least they’re not working on windmill farms that are really hazardous to their health though. /s
The same idiots voted for Trump again after having seen Trump do nothing to help them in his first term, so they're just getting what's coming to them.
Wow. I had a great-grandfather that died of black lung. Before I was born. When I was told this as a child, I never would have imagined I'd be reading about it still happening in 2025.
When I think about the race to get to renewables and the race to fully automate things like coal mining from end-to-end, and I see how people like Pedonald and his supporters cling to these lionized versions of coal mining as a vocation, that phrase about "who wants to be the last American killed in Vietnam" comes to mind...
Well no shit. You'd have to be amongst the dumbest motherfuckers on this plane to have not seen this coming. And no doubt those yokels voted for him, too.
I understand that in many coal mining towns, there really isn't much other work than the mines due to a litany of historical and economic factors. If working in a toxic environment that is going to kill me in order to dig up a bunch of rocks that are killing the world is the only option, do it temporarily and save up enough money to leave?
I get that doing that is easier said than done, but it really seems like miners are completely dependent on electing republicans into office to keep their dying industry hobbling along. Then, the Republicans they elect act like Republicans and all of the miners go full surprised Pikachu that the mines get less safe due to removal of regulations. This cycle has been repeating for years. At some point, you have to stop doing the same thing and expecting different results.
There’s a lot of remediation, construction and maintenance work that the same skill sets apply to. It’s a matter of funding restoration instead of destruction.
But they’ve been told that for decades and don’t want it.
The push for reeducation instead of funding for coal is one factor that likely sank HilDog's 2016 campaign. The debate on their side never got past "Me, change? No, you change!"
He clearly needs more black lung. I think the government should cut the guardrails entirely who cares about those, just extra cost. This people will vote in a heartbeat anyway.
Its the dummycrat cabal again trying to convince you that brown stuff hes droppin on you from a plane aint chocolate ice cream. Stay strong and dig into your wallets and give for the new ballroom to own the libs.
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