A major focus of the Department of Labor and its employees in Washington, West Virginia and throughout the country since day one of the Biden Administration has been keeping miners safe and healthy, as well as ensuring that miners suffering from black lung disease get the federal benefits they deserve.
That is why we will be front and center as we speak to attendees at the annual conference of the West Virginia Association of Black Lung Clinics in Pipestem this week.
We couldn’t be more pleased to be here in West Virginia to talk about these issues, because they are a part of who we are. When this administration needed to select the next leaders of the Mine Safety and Health Administration and the Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs, they chose someone raised in a southern West Virginia mining community and a native Iowan whose career has been dedicated to fighting to get workers their benefits.
While our jobs may differ, we are both in West Virginia out of deep concern for the surge in the number of cases of black lung disease, especially among our youngest miners.
Pneumoconiosis, in all its forms, is entirely preventable. No miner, here in West Virginia or at any U.S. mine, should be forced to sacrifice their health to provide for themselves and their families. Under former Secretary Walsh and Acting Secretary Su’s leadership, the Department of Labor is focused on fulfilling our nation’s responsibility to coal miners and coal communities. MSHA exists to protect miners and their well-being, and OWCP is there to make sure people coping with work-related illness find the process for getting the benefits for which they’ve qualified, fair and timely.
Earlier this week, MSHA leaders heard troubling stories at a black lung clinic in Cedar Grove about young coal miners with black lung disease facing total disability. Here in West Virginia — and other parts of Appalachia — federal coal workers’ health surveillance, a growing body of health literature and recent investigative reporting tells us that pneumoconiosis cases are surging.
Health experts and research suggest the likely cause of the surge in cases of advanced pneumoconiosis, including in younger miners, is respirable crystalline silica. Respirable crystalline silica is around 20 times more toxic than coal dust alone. To combat this urgent and troubling problem, MSHA has launched a silica enforcement initiative and plans to issue a proposed silica rule to protect all miners and prevent them from suffering entirely preventable debilitating and deadly workplace illnesses.
In concert with its silica protection efforts, MSHA launched a “Miner Health Matters” campaign in 2022 to raise awareness that federal law protects the rights of all miners to a safe and healthy workplace. For those coal miners who have already gotten sick, a program called Part 90 can be a powerful tool that gives them the right to work in a less dusty, healthier mine environment without facing pay reductions.
Miners who have fallen ill while working to power our country deserve to have their claims for black lung benefits handled quickly and appropriately. In 2023, the Department of Labor has recommitted itself to serving this community, strengthening its service to miners with black lung and their families. These efforts include always allowing miners in rural areas in need of a physician to use telemedicine appointments when distance becomes a problem. We also established a process so that every new miner who files a claim for medical benefits receives a call to help walk them through the application process and answer their questions. And, we’re proud to report that since October 2022, the Federal Black Lung Program has resolved 80 of its 100 oldest and most complex pending cases.
You have our word that the Department of Labor will continue to do all we can to keep miners safe and healthy and to effectively serve those suffering workplace illnesses, here in West Virginia mining communities and in those across our nation.
