|
|
 |
This article originally provided by
The Charleston Gazette
By Ken Ward Jr.
Staff writer
A Kentucky coal miner has sued U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao
to try to force federal regulators to tighten the limits on coal
dust that causes black lung disease.
Letcher County miner Scott Howard filed his suit Thursday in U.S.
District Court in eastern Kentucky.
Howard wants Judge Karen K. Caldwell to force the Labor Department's
Mine Safety and Health Administration to issue a tougher limit
governing coal miners' exposure to respirable coal dust.
MSHA, Howard says in his lawsuit, has a "plain legal duty to
promulgate a respirable dust regulation that will eliminate
respiratory illnesses caused by work in coal mines."
The suit asks that MSHA be ordered to issue the tougher dust limit
as an emergency temporary standard, a move allowed only if MSHA
believes miners are at "grave danger from exposure to substances or
agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful."
MSHA spokesman Matthew Faraci said in an e-mail response to
questions that agency lawyers are studying the lawsuit. MSHA has 60
days to respond, Faraci said.
Howard's suit comes after a series of media reports and scientific
findings that black lung, after years on the decline, is increasing
among miners in the Appalachian coalfields.
Black lung, or coal workers' pneumoconiosis, is a debilitating and
often fatal lung disease caused by breathing coal dust.
In 1969, Congress placed strict limits on airborne dust and ordered
coal operators to take periodic tests inside mines. The law has
reduced black lung among the nation's miners. But, at least partly
because of industry cheating on dust samples, the law has fallen far
short of its goal of eliminating the disease.
Between 1993 and 2002, nearly 2,300 West Virginia miners died of
black lung. West Virginia recorded the highest age-adjusted black
lung death rate nationwide during that period, according to the
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
In September 2006, a Centers for Disease Control study reported
pockets where black lung disease was progressing rapidly,
particularly in southwest Virginia and eastern Kentucky.
A year later, in September 2007, NIOSH researchers reported that
black lung rates among U.S. miners had doubled in the previous
decade.
The 1969 federal law set a limit of 2.0 milligrams of coal dust per
cubic meter of air in underground mines. Under the law, MSHA was to
update this standard to a level "which will prevent new incidences
of respiratory disease and the future development of such disease in
any person."
For at least the last 12 years, NIOSH has recommended that the
standard be tightened to 1.0 milligram per cubic meter, Howard noted
in his lawsuit.
In October 1996, a Labor Department advisory committee also
recommended a tougher limit.
More than two years later, in April 1999, the Clinton administration
announced plans to tighten the dust limit. The rule was not
completed before the Bush administration took office and, in
December 2002, then-MSHA chief Dave Lauriski dropped the proposal
from the agency's regulatory agenda.
Howard is represented by Stephen A. Sanders, a lawyer with the
Appalachian Citizens Law Center in Whitesburg, Ky., and by Nathan
Fetty, a lawyer with the Mine Safety Project of the Appalachian
Center for the Economy and the Environment.
To contact staff writer Ken Ward Jr., use e-mail or call
348-1702.
|
|
