THE Trump administrationefforts to develop coal The mining while simultaneously imposing deep cuts on the agencies responsible for ensuring the health and safety of minors left certain “stunned” defenders.
The agencies that protect coal minors against serious professional risks, including the best known condition under the name of “black lung”, were among the people affected by the major government reductions imposed by the White House and the “Department of Government” unofficial managed by the billionaire Elon Musk.
“The (miners of American workers) are delighted that they are considering the future of coal,” said Erin Bates, spokesperson for the United Mine Workers of America, about a series of decrees signed by the President to extend coal extraction. “But – if you do not protect the health and safety of minors, there will be no one to work in the mines that you reopen apparently.”
Trump last week signed a series of measures He said that the exploitation of coal in the United States would exploit to meet the energy requirements of hungry data centers that feed artificial intelligence software.
“All these plants that have been closed will be opened if they are sufficiently modern, or they will be scammed and tontals will be built,” Trump told a crowd of legislators, workers and managers of the White House when the order signs. “We are going to put the minors back to work.”
The coal industry has been shrinking in recent years in recent years and now only represents on 15% of power generated for the American electric grid. Natural gas, wind and solar energy have proven to have a competitive advantage on coal, contributing to its decline, because plants are cheaper to operate, according to Inside Climate News.
Even if the extraction of coal has shrunk, the potential dangers for people who still work in the field remain high. Pneumoconiosis is among the best known professional risks faced by coal minors, but is far from the only risk they are confronted with – others include roof collapse,, loss And lung cancerTo name only a few.
Trump’s push for coal came less than a week after the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, imposed a cup of 10,000 people to the Federal Department of Health and Social Services (HHS). Cups supervised by Kennedy, alongside those imposed by the unofficial Doge of Musk, represented the elimination of almost a quarter of the workforce of 82,000 people of HHS.
Nearly 900 of these workers were dismissed from the National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety (Niosh), including in the agency’s respiratory health division in Virginia-Western, which specifically supervised a X -ray screening program for black lungs. Doge also continued the mine safety cuts by eliminating 34 regional offices of the Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) mine in 19 states.
The deep cuts have particularly worried people intimately familiar with the suffering caused by pneumoconiosis – like Greg Wagner, doctor and former senior advisor to Niosh.
“My thoughts were:” Why Niosh? ” Why now? “Said Wagner, whose first works in a community clinic in a small mining town in coal in Virginia-Western brought it to a career working to prevent the disease in both Niosh and as an assistant work secretary for the safety and health of mines.
Wagner has also worked with the International Labor Organization and several countries in order to eliminate pneumoconosis on a global scale. He is now an environmental health teacher at Th Chan School of Harvard Health.
The Niosh “emptied” cuts, said Wagner, even if the agency’s experts “did what they had been asked to do and did it extraordinarily … too efficient with little recognition. And seeing this seem to go up in smoke – I – obviously, my feelings were deep and complex. ”
The administration also wants break a new rule On silica dust, which causes a kind of pneumoconiosis or “black pulmonary” disease which strikes young minors in the Appalachians more and more, while workers dig for veins more difficult to reach.
“To enter the silica rule – we are almost stunned,” said Bates. “The number of black pulmonary cases that appear in the United States is astronomical – it increases and not only the figures increase, but this happens to minors of younger and younger. Each day, this rule is delayed is another day that our minors contract black lungs.”
Silicosis is a disease caused by the inhalation of silica dust, a form of pneumoconiosis which can be even more serious than the black lung a century ago, and which has been known for a long time to harm the health of charcoal minors.
The government is aware of the dangers of silica dust for decades, recommending spectacular reductions in exposure levels From 1974. In 1993Wagner’s boss in Niosh, Dr. J Donald Millar, described the persistence of silicosis as “professional obscenity because there is no scientific excuse for his persistence”.
The MSHA finalized a rule in April 2024 reducing exposure to silica dust in mines, which was to come into force this year. Last week, the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association filed a prosecution aimed at interrupting the application of the Silica dust rule pending legal action. A few days later, federal mine regulators declared in court that they wanted to interrupt the silica dust rule for four months coal extraction operations, delaying any application measure until August 2025.
“The sudden change in the position of the disputes reported by the” application break “of MSHA, and by its unilateral proposal to maintain this unanswered affair for a period of four months is a call to the Clarion to minors of this nation according to which the agency responsible for deep responsibility to protect its health and its safety is to lose the stomach for the fight to vinnuity its own rule,” Mines and steel lawyers have writtenSeeking to intervene in the case.
Wagner said that his concerns about the delay in the silica rule extended beyond miners to workers from other industries – including people working in the sand or sculpture of engineering stone counters, all known to be environments where workers can be exposed to potentially harmful levels of silica dust.
“I don’t have the right words,” said Wagner about Niosh cuts, which was deeply involved in the research that has shown How the silica dust naked to minors. “I have the impression that it was done without reflection, made without consideration, and the consequences of the loss of the agency which, I think, will be felt for years.
“We will have to try to rebuild what Niosh has done.”