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The United Mine Workers of America made an “urgent demand” of the federal government on Thursday for the “immediate, uncompromised” enforcement of previously approved policies and rules that would protect coal miners from incurable black lung disease.

The call from the UMWA comes after new research this month shows that black lung rates have increased to an almost 50-year high after years of decline, with the highest rates of the disease found in miners from central Appalachia.

“More needs to be done, and it needs to be done now,” said UMWA International President Brian Sanson in a news release. “Miners are wearing masks, they are following rules, and yet they are still breathing in killer dust. We will not stand by while federal regulations are ignored and sat on while our members and coalfield workers pay for it with their lives.”

According to the peer-reviewed research, which was published by workers with the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, a third of miners in central Appalachia who have spent 25 years or more underground now have black lung. That’s a fourfold increase compared to 1999, per the research.

Previous research reported that 1 in 5 miners in central Appalachia, about 20.6% of them, had been diagnosed with the disease.

Coal Miners Were Poised to Win Key Safety........

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