Silica: MSHA Acts to Protect Miners From Deadly Lung Disease

The Mine Safety and Health Administration announced yesterday that it is issuing its long-awaited standard protecting miners from deadly silica-related disease. The announcement adds to the number of new standards and regulations being issued by the Biden administration in advance of a Congressional Review Act deadline that could enable a Republican Congress and President to repeal recently issues rules.

The new MSHA standard comes 50 years after a report from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health recommended reducing worker exposure to silica, and over 90 years after at least 764 workers died digging the Hawks Nest tunnel through a mountain of solid silica near Gauley Bridge, West Virginia.

Inhalation of silica dust can cause such chronic, irreversible, and potentially disabling or fatal conditions such as acute silicosis, accelerated silicosis, simple chronic silicosis, progressive massive fibrosis, nonmalignant respiratory diseases (e.g., emphysema and chronic bronchitis), lung cancer, and kidney disease.

The new MSHA standard comes 50 years after a recommendation from NIOSH recommending reducing worker exposure to silica and over 90 years after at least 764 workers died digging the Hawks Nest tunnel through a mountain of solid silica near Gauley Bridge, West Virginia..

The new standard:

• Lowers the permissible exposure limit of respirable crystalline silica to 50 micrograms per cubic meter of air for a full-shift exposure, calculated as an 8-hour time-weighted average. If a miner’s exposure exceeds the limit, the final rule requires mine operators to take immediate corrective actions to come into compliance.
• Requires mine operators to use engineering controls to prevent miners’ overexposures to silica dust and use dust samplings and environmental evaluations to monitor exposures.
• Compels metal and nonmetal mine operators to establish medical surveillance programs to provide periodic health examinations at no cost to miners. The exams are similar to the medical surveillance programs available to coal miners under existing standards.
• Replaces an outdated standard for respiratory protection with a new standard reflecting the latest advances in respiratory protection and practices. This update will better protect miners against airborne hazards, including silica dust, diesel particulate matter, asbestos and other contaminants.

Coal mine operators will have one year after the regulation’s effective date to comply with the rule. Metal and non-metal mine operators will have two years following the rule’s effective date to comply with the new requirements.

Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su described the suffering miners face:

In Central Appalachia, an estimated one in five long tenured coal miners have black lung disease. That’s one in five who struggle to get through a phone call or play with their grandkids without losing their breath. One in five whose life expectancy is cut down by an average of 12 years. One in five forced to carry this irreversible disease.

And the trends are going in the wrong direction. Doctors are diagnosing and treating more miners with black lung and other respiratory diseases than ever before at younger and younger ages.

MSHA estimates will save nearly 1,100 lives and prevent more than 3,700 cases of silica-related illness.

The standard comes after a recent resurgence if severe black lung disease.

after years of declining rates of black lung, caused by breathing coal and silica dust, rates of the severe form of the disease had surged. In the 1990s, less than 1 percent of central Appalachian miners who had worked at least 25 years underground had this advanced stage of illness. By 2015, the number had risen to 5 percent.

Because of changes in mining practices, workers were cutting more rock, producing more silica dust. The effects began showing up on chest X-rays and in tissue samples taken from miners’ lungs. Clinics in Appalachia began seeing miners in their 30s and 40s with advanced disease.

Today’s coal miners are more likely than workers from past decades to die from black lung disease, particularly those working in Central Appalachia, another study found last year.

In the 1990s, less than 1 percent of central Appalachian miners who had worked at least 25 years underground had this advanced stage of illness. By 2015, the number had risen to 5 percent.

Lowering the permissible exposure limit for silica follows a similar action by OSHA in 2016, which mainly protected construction and foundry workers.

While mine safety advocates welcomed the new standard, they are concerned that enforcement mechanisms are not strong enough to prevent cheating.

The regulations largely leave it to mining companies to collect samples showing they are in compliance, despite evidence of past gamesmanship and fraud. Miners have described being pressured to place sampling devices in areas with far less dust than where they actually worked, leading to artificially low results

You can read more information on black lung and PMF here where in 2018 NPR’s Howard Berkes, working with Frontline in a multiyear investigation, produced one of the most important workplace safety and health story in years. Berkes told the tragic story of corporate and regulatory failures over the last couple of decades that have allowed thousands of coal miners to sicken and die from Black Lung disease, or progressive massive fibrosis.

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Head photo by Earl Dotter.