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.
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.
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.
