Published: September 24, 2019 |

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The return of black lung to Appalachia may be due to the coal industry here mining thinner seams of high-priced met coal, used to make steel.

Morgantown Occupational Physician Dr. Carl Werntz said black lung is often caused by silica dust from sandstone the mine machines cut along with coal. He said the miners he sees are increasingly working thinner coal seams with more sandstone.

“A lot of them will describe working in lower coal. And now instead of the dust being 1 percent silica, you’re getting maybe 50 percent silica,” Werntz said.

The mine safety community has been concerned with a marked rise in black lung among younger miners in Appalachia. Werntz said the thinner coal seams theory is not the only explanation put forward, but it is gaining acceptance.

After more than a century of mining, the region has exhausted the thicker, easier to access coal seams. That, and the collapse of demand for thermal steam coal used to generate electricity, the industry has increasingly shifted to mining thinner seams of higher-value met coal - often the only viable option.

Werntz said the areas where black-lung is on the rise are the same areas where these factors are present.

“If you take West Virginia, Virginia, and eastern Kentucky out of the equation, the amount of black lung we’re seeing hasn’t changed,” he said. “It’s actually continued to go down in the rest of the country.”

There are other theories about the increase in the number of black-lung cases, but Werntz argued those theories are based on factors also present in areas where the number of cases is not rising. He stressed the best and only effective way to stop this horrible and debilitating disease is to prevent it from happening.

“We were taught that this is a disease that you’ll see a little bit of in people who’ve been mining for 30 or 40 or 50 years,” he said. “And what’s really tragic right now is that we’re seeing this is young coal miners. And it’s a preventable disease.”

More information is available at CDC.gov.

Source: Public News Service

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