In this photo, from 2015 Joe Main, third from left, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Mine Safety and Health, and Patricia Silvey, center, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Operations with MSHA, speak with workers at the Gibson North mine, in Princeton, Ind. Federal mining regulators in December 2017 indicated they were reconsidering rules meant to protect underground miners from breathing coal and rock dust - the cause of black lung - and diesel exhaust, which can cause cancer.
Timothy D. Easley / Associated Press
‘energy, explained’ podcast: The black lung disease epidemic that ‘shouldn’t have happened’
StateImpact's Reid Frazier talks with NPR's Howard Berkes
As director of journalism, I work on things like newsroom strategy, culture, ethics, and training; I work with reporters (mainly climate reporter Rachel McDevitt) on stories; and I'm deeply involved with our community engagement efforts and collaborations with other news organizations.
My roots in journalism go back to growing up outside Washington, D.C., reading Woodward and Bernstein in my hometown paper, and being drawn to the ideals of freedom of the press and holding the powerful to account. I also idolized the Postās sports columnists, and in fact was a sports reporter/editor before I moved to news.
I followed journalismās call to the University of Missouri, then to jobs in Virginia and Maryland before landing in Pennsylvania, and Iāve lived near Gettysburg for more than two decades. Living in rural Pa. helps inform my work as a journalist and my belief that listening is one of the most important things we can do.
If Iām not doing journalism stuff, I may be traveling, bird-watching, or both.
Timothy D. Easley / Associated Press
In this photo, from 2015 Joe Main, third from left, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Mine Safety and Health, and Patricia Silvey, center, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Operations with MSHA, speak with workers at the Gibson North mine, in Princeton, Ind. Federal mining regulators in December 2017 indicated they were reconsidering rules meant to protect underground miners from breathing coal and rock dust - the cause of black lung - and diesel exhaust, which can cause cancer.
In December, an NPR and Frontline investigation revealed that regulators didn’t act when they could have stopped the exposure of thousands of coal miners to toxic dust.
Now, NPR reporter Howard Berkes and a team discovered, there’s an epidemic of black lung disease caused by that dust.
The disease is fatal. Bernard Carlson, who worked in mines in Somerset and Westmoreland counties in western Pennsylvania, has it.
“No matter how you filter, no matter what they filter, the fine stuff is what gets in there and cuts you up,” Carlson told Berkes. “And it ain’t coming out. Once it gets in there, it ain’t coming out. The black stuff sometimes will. But that fine silica dust? Uh-uh. You’re done.”
Berkes and his team found Carlson and other miners after their research on advanced black lung disease cases led to a simple question.
“…I’d been wondering, how could this happen?” Berkes said. “If the regulatory system that was supposed to protect these miners had been working, it shouldn’t have happened.”
In the latest episode of StateImpact Pennsylvania’s ‘energy, explained’ podcast, Berkes talks with StateImpact’s Reid Frazier about the story, and how miners like Carlson reflect on how practices in coal mines caused them to contract this deadly form of black lung disease.
StateImpact Pennsylvania is a collaboration among WITF, WHYY, and the Allegheny Front. Reporters Reid Frazier, Rachel McDevitt and Susan PhillipsĀ cover the commonwealth’s energy economy. Read their reports on this site, and hear them on public radio stations across Pennsylvania.
Climate Solutions, a collaboration of news organizations, educational institutions and a theater company, uses engagement, education and storytelling to help central Pennsylvanians toward climate change literacy, resilience and adaptation. Our work will amplify how people are finding solutions to the challenges presented by a warming world.
