Mine safety advocates agree new silica dust rule is progress, but some worry

Republished from Kentucky Lantern

It was a celebratory moment years in the making when acting Labor Secretary Julie Su, flanked by miners and advocates, announced the rollout of a new rule limiting silica dust exposure for miners in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, last week.

For years, advocates for mine safety had urged the federal government to adopt strict rules around the substance that has led to an increase in severe black lung cases among young miners. Finally, one was announced.

“For too long, we accepted this as just the way things are for people who work in mines,” Su said in Uniontown Tuesday. “They’ve had to work without the same protections from silica dust that people in other industries have, even though we’ve known about the harms of silica dust.”

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Mine safety advocates largely agree the rule is a positive change. But some are concerned that it still leaves too much power in the hands of mining companies instead of regulators, and lacks clarity when it comes to how it should be enforced.

“Overall, the rule is a step in the right direction, which is what we’ve been asking for for many years now,” said Erin Bates, a spokesperson for the United Mine Workers of America. “But coal operators are going to have to be held accountable at the end of the day.”

In recent years, severe cases of black lung disease have become more common. One of the major causes is silica dust. Contact with the substance is becoming more prevalent as the Appalachian region has been so aggressively mined that miners are digging into more narrow coal seams. Silica dust is produced when miners break through the rock surrounding those seams.

The new rule,which was published April 18, creates a limit for levels of silica dust exposure and requires mining companies to actively monitor it. The new limit, 50 micrograms per cubic meter of air, is half of what is currently allowed, and has long been called for by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, along with others.

But the rule largely relies on mining companies themselves to measure the quality of air in their mines and to alert regulators when silica dust levels exceed the new limit.

This is in part, Bates said, because the Mine Safety and Health Administration simply doesn’t have the funding to regularly sample air in mines across the country. Still, she likened the rule to asking drivers to enforce the speed limit.

“How often is a driver going to call the police and say, ‘hey, you know, I’m really sorry,’” Bates said. “‘I was going 75 in a 55. Go ahead and write me a ticket.’”

“But the fact that there’s something in place that we can fight with and we can use is huge,” Bates said. “Every time we find a violation, we can point back to this rule … Before, when we found that there were high levels of silica dust in our mines, there was nothing we could do.”

Rebecca Shelton is the director of policy of the Appalachian Citizens Law Center in Whitesburg, a group that has advocated for silica dust regulation.

“I got into this work through being from Kentucky, really,” Shelton said. “Everyone knows someone who has black lung, it seems. I think that’s something that is a fairly foreign or detached concept for most people in this country: that somebody in your family has a disease related to their occupation and occupational hazards.”

Like Bates, Shelton believes the rule is a positive step, but is concerned about enforcement.

And Shelton worries that the Mine Safety and Health Administration may not be up to the task of enforcement, even when companies do report silica dust levels above the established limit.

“Something we’ve been pushing for for a long time is for MSHA just to have the funding they need to hire more inspectors,” Shelton said. “There has been a decline in the number of inspectors, especially for the coal mining industry over the last decade … It makes it…