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BS: Black Lung on the Rise Again

10 Jul 12 - 08:10 PM (#3374686)
Subject: BS: Black Lung on the Rise Again
From: Janie

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


10 Jul 12 - 08:16 PM (#3374689)
Subject: RE: BS: Black Lung on the Rise Again
From: Janie

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


10 Jul 12 - 08:26 PM (#3374695)
Subject: RE: BS: Black Lung on the Rise Again
From: Bobert

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~


10 Jul 12 - 10:48 PM (#3374748)
Subject: RE: BS: Black Lung on the Rise Again
From: ChanteyLass

Tragic.


10 Jul 12 - 10:53 PM (#3374751)
Subject: RE: BS: Black Lung on the Rise Again
From: michaelr

That's horrible.

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


10 Jul 12 - 11:26 PM (#3374764)
Subject: RE: BS: Black Lung on the Rise Again
From: Desert Dancer

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


11 Jul 12 - 04:28 AM (#3374807)
Subject: RE: BS: Black Lung on the Rise Again
From: Gurney

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.


11 Jul 12 - 09:08 AM (#3374871)
Subject: RE: BS: Black Lung on the Rise Again
From: GUEST,999

Big Coal gets desperate.

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


11 Jul 12 - 09:30 AM (#3374880)
Subject: RE: BS: Black Lung on the Rise Again
From: Greg F.

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.