Sacrificing Miners’ Health for a Dying Industry

“Beautiful, clean coal.” 

At least that’s what the current administration is saying to help justify a recent series of executive orders aimed at boosting coal production. 

In reality, there’s nothing clean about coal. Like other fossil fuel plants, facilities burning coal spew pollutants including mercury, lead, sulfur dioxide, and heavy metals. These are linked to cancers, respiratory diseases, neurological disorders, and death. Particulate matter released from burning coal is actually more toxic than particulate matter from other fossil fuel sources. 

Coal power plant retirements have direct public health benefits. In Pennsylvania, for example, the Keystone facility had over 600 associated deaths per year. That number dropped to 80 deaths per year after installing emissions scrubbers. 

The coal industry has been on the decline for decades. That’s unlikely to change, even with these executive orders. Coal plants are expensive to build and maintain, especially compared to natural gas and renewables. Utility companies have been distancing themselves from coal, increasingly focused on investing in cheaper renewable energy, including wind and solar. Running older and less productive coal plants is also more expensive for consumers, and can lead to higher energy bills.

While this administration is interested in reviving the coal industry, they are simultaneously gutting the federal agencies that keep coal miners safe.

This includes gutting the workforce at key federal agencies, including the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). NIOSH researches and makes recommendations to prevent workplace injury, illness, and death; importantly for coal miners, the agency also tracks deadly black lung disease and offers free, confidential screenings for black lung. MSHA helps ensure mining operations adhere to safety standards designed to prevent explosions, collapses, toxic dust exposure, and other disasters. MSHA regularly inspects mines—as required by federal law—and responds to safety complaints from miners. While some initially planned layoffs at NIOSH were stopped, the agency has still lost staff and capacity.   

MSHA, meanwhile, recently announced an indefinite delay of a standard to limit miners’ exposure to silica dust, the principal cause of black lung disease. Black lung is chronic, progressive, and has been on the rise for the last two decades—appearing in younger and younger miners, who are inhaling more toxic dust as they’ve had to mine deeper and deeper to get out remaining coal. Miners and their allies have been fighting for a strong silica dust standard for decades. MSHA’s decision to postpone a silica standard—based on a convoluted legal argument—is the latest blow to coal miners.

Cutting NIOSH and MSHA funding, and delaying a silica dust standard, puts miners’ lives at risk. And while coal is rightfully a proud, cornerstone industry for many communities and workers, what’s needed is practical, pragmatic information about the future of that industry—not rhetoric or false hope—so those communities and workers can plan for their future.