Feds split difference on coal dust limit, but new rule will increase sampling and real-time data

Photo by S. Wilkes, Gallery Stock

Labor Secretary Thomas Perez on Wednesday "announced the final version of a long-delayed rule to reduce coal miners’ exposure to the dust that causes deadly black lung disease," Ken Ward Jr. reports for The Charleston Gazette. The new rule, which will be phased in over two years to give the industry time to adjust, "will increase sampling in mines and make use of new technology to provide real-time information about dust levels, allowing miners and coal operators to make adjustments, instead of letting overexposures continue."

"The changes are part of the agency’s broad effort to end a disease that continues to kill miners, more than four decades after a federal law made eliminating such deaths a national priority," Ward writes. "The final rule steps back from an October 2010 proposal that would have slashed the legal dust limit in half, from 2 milligrams of dust per cubic meter of air to 1 milligram per cubic meter. After intense opposition from industry and congressional Republicans, the final rule sets the dust limit at 1.5."

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the United Mine Workers, other miners’ health advocates and public-health experts all backed a 1-milligram standard, Ward notes, adding: "Since 1968, 76,000 coal miners nationwide have died from black lung. And researchers have warned of a resurgence of the disease, especially in pockets of the Appalachian coalfields, affecting younger miners whose entire careers took place after the 1969 law’s dust limits went into effect." (Read more)