Worst form of black lung is roaring back

[theHandpuppet]

The Charleston Gazette
Monday, September 15, 2014
Worst form of black lung is roaring back
By Ken Ward Jr., Staff writer

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The worst type of black lung disease now affects a larger share of Appalachian coal miners than at any time since the 1970s, government researchers warned in a new data analysis published Monday.

Experts at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health said the finding highlights the resurgence of a deadly worker disease that was once close to being eliminated across the coalfields.

“Each of these cases is a tragedy and represents a failure among all those responsible for preventing this severe disease,” the NIOSH researchers wrote in a letter published Monday in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

The letter cited NIOSH data showing that by 2012, the rate of the most severe form of black lung had reached 3.2 percent of workers in the Central Appalachian coalfields of Southern West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky, a nearly tenfold increase over the disease prevalence 15 years earlier.

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