May 19, 2025

Tragic lessons from West Virginia’s history remind us that we can not go backwards when it comes to worker safety.
One saying in the labor movement is that every safety rule and regulation is written in blood. That is to say, the laws were created or strengthened in response to workers organizing after tragic events or accidents that resulted in injury or death in the workplace.
This is why the recent elimination of worker safety programs weakens the support structure is such a chilling and troubling turn of events, most notably, cuts to worker safety programs and standards that would prevent black lung in coal mines.
Appalachia’s complicated legacy of worker safety shortfalls
Silicosis and black lung (Coal Workers’ Pneumoconiosis) are caused by the long term inhalation of fine particles of silica minerals. It typically affects manual laborers in mining, construction, and stone cutting. Once set in, the effects are incurable. Sufferers experience shortness of breath, chest pain, and difficulty engaging in the simplest physical activities like climbing stairs or walking short distances. The Hawk’s Nest Disaster of 1930 provides the best test case for the dangers of not taking full precautions against silicosis.




An excavation project through Gauley Mountain in West Virginia ended in one of the most deadly disasters in U.S. history. 5,000 men worked to construct a 32 by 36-foot tunnel through the mountain to divert water from the New River to a nearby hydroelectric plant. The rocks the miners tunneled through were mostly silica, and their dry drilling technique released thick clouds of dust. Every day the miners drilled, they coated their lungs with dust, and most couldn’t work in the tunnel for more than a year as the effects became more difficult to contend with. Of the roughly 2,900 men working within the tunnel, 764 would die. The high body count overwhelmed the nearby towns, and a mass grave site was dug to bury the fallen miners.
The incident unearthed deep veins of race and class inequity, as the victims were mostly African American. This pattern was mirrored in an ongoing silicosis outbreak in which 200 cases have been documented among Latino immigrant countertop stonecutters in California.
A black lung resurgence
The toll from lax safety measures and lack of concern for the lives of workers continues: from 1970 through 2016, black lung disease was the underlying or contributing cause of death for a total of 75,178 miners.
Appalachia has a long history of exploitation at the hands of industries that failed to prioritize worker safety.
Tracking the emergence of silicosis and preventing its worst effects takes consistent effort. In the U.S., the two major programs to undertake this life-saving function are NIOSH and OSHA. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) conducts research and makes safety recommendations to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which sets workforce safety regulations in place.
April 1st, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) fired the entire team that was carrying out NIOSH’s Coal Workers Health Surveillance Program (CWHSP), as well as engineers and scientists working to ensure miners’ safety. CWHSP focuses on respiratory illnesses and provides health screenings like chest X-Rays and blood pressure screenings at no cost to miners. Screening results are anonymous, and miners diagnosed with respiratory illnesses are informed how to exercise their rights to request working in mine areas with less dust – a provision that is critical to both career security and long-term health. CWHSP was reinstated in mid May, after public outcry, but DOGE’s apparent flippancy around worker safety in these areas leaves the future of these programs uncertain.

Map showing black lung’s resurgence. Credit: Matt Hepler, Appalachian Voices Source: Analysis of public records data received from Department of Labor, October 28, 2024. Use the interactive map here.
Furthermore, DOGE has announced it will close down 11 OSHA offices and 34 offices for the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). These closures coincide with a resurgence in silica poisoning, partly accelerated by modern machinery like mining and sandblasting equipment that emits more dust particles. Already under-resourced, these programs will now have nowhere near the needed capacity to track and mitigate respiratory disease outbreaks. In April, President Trump signed four executive orders to rev up mining and coal use. With greatly diminished health tracking systems and ramped up coal production priorities, Appalachians are flying blind into an uncertain phase of industrialization — And History tells us that the cost could be devastating.