New coal dust rules take effect

Today's post is shared from thehill.com New rules aimed at limiting miners’ exposure to coal dust rules by improving air monitoring took effect Friday. The Mine Safety and Health Administration, a unit of the Labor Department, finalized the new rules in April after years of controversy and debate over restricting the standards that had not been changed in decades. Under the new standards, mine operators will have to more thoroughly check for dust before shifts and take immediate action if levels are too high, and will be prohibited from using sample averages across time. Air sampling is now required for full shifts when mines are at 80 percent capacity and sampling technicians must be recertified every three years. The April rule also cut the maximum dust exposure level for miners by 25 percent. But that provision does not take effect until 2016. The regulations are meant to help prevent black lung disease, an ailment caused by coal dust that has killed thousands of miners. Coal mining company Murray Energy sued the Labor Department shortly after the rule came out to challenge it.

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Johns Hopkins medical unit rarely finds black lung, helping coal industry defeat miners' claims

Today's post was shared by FairWarning and comes from www.publicintegrity.org

There is an unmistakable pattern in Wheeler’s readings. The Center identified more than 1,500 cases decided since 2000 in which Wheeler read at least one X-ray; in all, he interpreted more than 3,400 films during this time. The numbers show his opinions consistently have benefited coal companies: Wheeler rated at least one X-ray as positive in less than 4 percent of cases. Subtracting the cases in which he ultimately concluded another disease was more likely, this number drops to about 2 percent. In 80 percent of the X-rays he read as positive, Wheeler saw only the earliest stage of the disease. He never once found advanced or complicated black lung. Other readers, looking at the same images, saw these severe forms of the disease on more than 750 films. Where other doctors saw black lung, Wheeler saw tuberculosis, histoplasmosis or a similar disease on about 34 percent of X-rays. This number shoots up in cases in which others saw complicated black lung, which is so severe it triggers automatic compensation. In such cases, Wheeler attributed the masses in miners’ lungs to these other diseases on two-thirds of X-rays. Asked if he stood by this record, Wheeler said, “Absolutely.”