BS: Black Lung on the Rise Again

Subject: BS: Black Lung on the Rise Again
From: Janie
Date: 10 Jul 12 - 08:10 PM

An investigation by NPR and the Center for Public Integrity reveals that Black Lung is on the rise again. More severe, more complicated and hitting miners at younger ages, especially in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia.

The link below is to the first in a series of reports.

Breaks my heart

Subject: RE: BS: Black Lung on the Rise Again
From: Janie
Date: 10 Jul 12 - 08:16 PM

At the bottom of the linked page are links to additional stories from the series.

Subject: RE: BS: Black Lung on the Rise Again
From: Bobert
Date: 10 Jul 12 - 08:26 PM

Clean coal, my bony hillbilly butt!!!

Nothin' clean about it at any level... Killin' the folks diggin' it and killing the rest of us and the planet by burning it...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Black Lung on the Rise Again
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 10 Jul 12 - 10:48 PM

Tragic.

Subject: RE: BS: Black Lung on the Rise Again
From: michaelr
Date: 10 Jul 12 - 10:53 PM

That's horrible.

One of my favorite songs from one of my favorite singers.

Subject: RE: BS: Black Lung on the Rise Again
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 10 Jul 12 - 11:26 PM

It certainly is an outrageous report. Younger men getting a lifetime's exposure to dust in a decade, due to missing dust controls, longer work hours, and changes in the type of drilling.

Here is a companion story in the West Virginia Gazette that they link: Dust reforms stalled by years of inaction.

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: BS: Black Lung on the Rise Again
From: Gurney
Date: 11 Jul 12 - 04:28 AM

When I was a young man, I was both a miner and later an insurance agent. Because I lived in a mining area, many of the claims that I paid out were for miners, and in almost every case respiratory problems were a contributing cause-of-death. I made a point of reading the death certificates.
I thought at the time that blacklung, pneumoconiosis, was as dreadful a death as silicosis, where the lungs are abraded by the stonedust trapped in them, but only a doctor in a mining town would really know.
Powdered stone was spread liberally in the pits to dampen the powdered coaldust, which is flammable enough to be called explosive.

Bone and blood is the price of coal.

Subject: RE: BS: Black Lung on the Rise Again
From: GUEST,999
Date: 11 Jul 12 - 09:08 AM

Big Coal gets desperate.

An article that at once begs a question and defies attempts to phrase it in six or fewer words.

Subject: RE: BS: Black Lung on the Rise Again
From: Greg F.
Date: 11 Jul 12 - 09:30 AM

No surprise to me - just part & parcel of the overall slide back to 1905 conditions for the entire U.S. workforce championed by the Republicans.

They won't be happy until we're back to 16 hour days, military suppression of unions, Ludlow, Triangle Shirtwaist, Homestead & a new John D. Rockefeller clone throwing dimes from his limousine.

And we're already a good part of the way there.