Retired coal miners, widows and Appalachian policy groups took to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, urging lawmakers to increase disability benefits and pressure federal regulators to protect existing workers.

Their advocacy comes on the heels of a recent report from the Appalachia Mid-South Newsroom and NPR showing the rate of black lung disease among underground coal miners is the worst in nearly half a century.

According to data published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, the prevalence of black lung disease in working miners from Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia, who have worked at least 25 years, is nearly ten times higher than in the rest of the country.

Coal miners, family members and health professionals met with federal lawmakers in Washington to seek stronger dust protections and changes to disability benefits for workers with black lung disease.

Participants traveled from Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia. The delegation included relatives of miners who had died from the disease.

New data show cases of black lung disease are rising among Appalachian coal miners, especially in southwestern Virginia.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health reported nearly one in three working underground coal miners, with a quarter of a century of experience working underground, now has the disease.

It has been almost 11 months since a federal rule to protect coal miners from rock dust exposure was supposed to go into effect.

Members of two group representing members and their families headed to Washington, D.C. Tuesday to convince senators to push for enforcement of the silica rule and to bring miners’ black lung and survivors benefits above the sub-minimum wage level.

President Donald Trump has vowed to return America’s declining coal industry to its glory days. But the only real revival of trying to put this polluting fuel back at its peak is its ability to destroy the health of its miners.

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control found that black lung rates are the highest they’ve been since the 1970s. 

The disease can be debilitating, even for young miners. Justin Hicks reported for the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom on the new CDC report. Longtime investigative reporter Howard Berkes assisted, continuing his years of reporting on black lung, as previously featured on Inside Appalachia.

Silicosis is one of the oldest workplace hazards and public health experts have known for decades how to prevent it. Yet a new wave of workers, from Appalachian coalminers to Latino countertop fabrication workers, are developing and dying from the disease as industry fights new protections and regulators fail to defend the rules that could protect them.

A new peer reviewed research letter from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health found that black lung disease is on the rise among coal miners in Central Appalachia.

John Sayles’ classic film about the Matewan Masacre is set in 1920, but attitudes of the coal industry and state government have not changed markedly in the intervening 106 years. Now, as then, the coal industry’s primary motivation is to get the coal out of the ground as cheaply as possible, and if that means bending or breaking health, safety and environmental regulations, so be it.

A Kentucky group representing miners with black lung is urging U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers to support a bill significantly boosting the federal disability benefits these miners receive.

The Trump administration has doubled down on its delay of rulemaking that under the Biden administration had been designed to protect miners from black lung - days after fresh evidence surfaced that a long-term rise of the disease throughout central Appalachia is growing for underground coal miners who face futures of increasingly labored breath and stagnant disability benefits.

With new research showing that black lung disease among Appalachian coal miners has reached an almost 50-year high, advocates are demanding federal regulations be enforced.

The United Mine Workers of America made an “urgent demand” of the federal government on Thursday for the “immediate, uncompromised” enforcement of previously approved policies and rules that would protect coal miners from incurable black lung disease.

Wherever you go in Letcher County, you don’t have to look very hard to see what black lung is doing here. Whether you’re at a church event, the grocery store, or a doctor’s appointment, you see people who are sick because of the deadly disease, and struggling to breathe.

New NIOSH research shows black-lung rates among veteran underground miners in Central Appalachia have reached their highest level in nearly 50 years. Nearly one in three miners with at least 25 years underground in Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia showed evidence of the disease.

The Department of Labor has proposed replacing a rule that required self-insured coal companies to secure 100% of their projected black-lung liabilities. Under the proposed system, each company’s collateral would depend on a federal assessment of its financial strength and risk of default.

Right now, too many miners are out of work, sick and stuck having to choose between paying their bills and paying for food or housing.

Local officials in Eastern Kentucky and other Appalachian communities are urging Congress to increase black lung benefits, which have lost substantial value to inflation. The Support Our Miners Act has regional support but has not yet attracted a bipartisan congressional coalition.

The Support Our Miners Act would increase monthly compensation for disabled miners and surviving family members in Pennsylvania and other coal-producing states. Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and West Virginia have historically accounted for some of the largest numbers of federal black-lung claims.