Trump Touts Clean Coal - But Cuts Programs That Protect Miners

April 22, 2025 - Emory “Curly” Carter sometimes feels like he can’t breathe. Household chores, such as cleaning and gardening, leave him gasping for air, making him feel like he has a “real bad” case of pneumonia.

After nearly four decades working in underground coal mines, Carter was diagnosed with black lung, a deadly and incurable disease caused by inhaling coal dust over a long period. Now, the 70 year-old worries that the Trump administration’s steep cuts to health and safety programs will endanger the next generation of miners across the coalfields of West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia.

 

At the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH),the division of the Health and Human Services Department that providesfree black lung screenings for coal miners, Trump appointees fired roughly two-thirds of the staff this month. There are no employees left to run the screening program in the agency’s office in Morgantown, West Virginia.

Trump officials at the Labor Department’s Mine Safety and Health Administration, which protects against mine safety risks and disasters, have delayed enforcement of a landmark rule limiting miners’ exposure to coal dust. The agency also is considering shuttering 35 offices nationwide, leaving only two offices to inspect and monitor more than 100 mines in Kentucky.

Taken together, these moves threaten to bring more disease and death to coal-dependent communities across Appalachia, miners and advocates say. They come despite Donald Trump’s recent executive orders aimed at boosting “beautiful, clean coal,” which the president signed while flanked by more than two dozen miners wearing hard hats.

“President Trump has said he wants to increase coal production, but it’s not rocket science that without these protections, we’re going to end up with a bunch of dead coal miners,” said Anita Wolfe, who spent nearly 40 years at NIOSH’s Morgantown office before retiring in 2020.

The cuts also come despite the “Make America Healthy Again” agenda promoted by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which calls for combating the chronic diseases fueling a decline in U.S. life expectancy.

Asked for comment, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in an email, “There is no greater ally to America’s coal miners than President Trump. … He is using every lever of his executive power to carry out his energy dominance agenda while keeping our hardworking coal miners safe.”

A second White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly, said NIOSH and other health agencies would be combined to form a new entity called the Administration for a Healthy America. The reorganization will “improve coordination of health resources for Americans,” the official said.

For Carter, who serves as president of his local chapter of the United Mine Workers of America, Trump’s recent actions on coal have prompted mixed feelings.

Carter was encouraged by the executive orders, which he said could spur shuttered mines to reopen in some of West Virginia’s poorest counties. But he was appalled by the suspension of the black lung screening program, which helped many of his former colleagues receive diagnoses and treatment.

Several of those former colleagues have died of black lung or complications from the disease, such as heart failure or lung cancer. Others need oxygen tanks to breathe and struggle to speak.

“For me, the NIOSH people losing their jobs is uncalled-for,” Carter said in a recent interview in his kitchen, where he keeps a ventilator from his doctor and a hard hat from his days as a miner. “I mean, why do away with a service that’s going to benefit people down the road? I’m no politician, but it doesn’t make sense to me.”

 

 

Long-Standing Protections

The black lung screening initiative, formally known as the Coal Workers’ Health Surveillance Program, owes its existence to President Richard M. Nixon. In 1969 he signed into law the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act after public outcry over a mine explosion the previous yearin Farmington, West Virginia, that killed 78 workers.

Under the landmark law, miners can receive free and confidential chest X-rays to determine whether their lung tissue is damaged. Those who are diagnosed with black lung can transfer to a less dusty part of the mine without a pay cut, and they can apply for federal compensation for medical treatments and prescription drugs.

The screening program offers contracts to radiologists across the country who are certified to evaluate X-rays for black lung. It also employs epidemiologists who recently concluded that one in five longtime coal miners in Central Appalachia has black lung - the highest level recorded in 25 years.

In 2005, the program expanded to include a mobile health unit that traveled to far-flung mines across Appalachia. The mobile unit, which resembled an RV, provided a convenient way for miners to get X-rayed without missing a day of work.

But on a recent sunny afternoon in April, the mobile unit sat idle behind a chain-link fence at NIOSH’s Morgantown office. It has been parked there since Inauguration Day.

In late February, Trump signed an executive order that prohibited federal employees from traveling for conferences and for “other nonessential purposes” - a directive that kept the vehicle idle. Then this month, the administration fired most of the staff working on the screening program as part of massive layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services.

There are no epidemiologists left to analyze the data on the region’s black lung epidemic. No IT staff to process the X-rays. No mail room employees to send letters to miners and their doctors. No procurement staff to renew expired contracts with radiologists. And certainly no one to drive the mobile unit.

“There is no way to provide these resources to these coal miners, which I will mention are congressionally authorized,” said Scott Laney, who led research for the screening program until April 1, when he was placed on administrative leave and told of his termination effective June 2.

“The entire program has gone through all of the stages of grief five times already,” he added. “We don’t know what we’re going to do with 750,000 X-rays and whether they’re just going to be thrownin the trash.”

Laney spoke at his home alongside Buffie Rosenberger, whose father, Chester Fike, was diagnosed with black lung through the screening program. Rosenberger grew emotional and teared up while discussing her father, who received a double lung transplant four months before he died. She said her son now works as a coal miner, despite the dangers he grew up hearing about.

“My husband had 30 years in the coal mines and my son has 12 years underground,” she said. “I have uncles in there, too. They go where the money is, and they’re hard workers. I mean, not just anybody can do what they do. My husband was underground in a mine explosion one time. So, yeah, we’ve been through it.”

Rosenberger’s son declined to comment for this article. Several coal miners with black lung also declined to comment, saying they worried the administration would retaliate by revoking their federal benefits.

 

Dangerous Dust

 

At the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), meanwhile, Trump officials this month suspended enforcement of a rule that curbed miners’ exposure to the toxic dust that causes black lung. The dust, known as crystalline silica, is generated when miners drill through rock to retrieve coal from thin seams. Once inhaled, these tiny particles can become trapped in the lungs, causing scarring and inflammation over time.

The rule, finalized under the Biden administration, limited miners’ exposure to crystalline silica to 50 micrograms per cubic meter of air per 8-hour shift, down from 100 micrograms per cubic meter. Biden officials had projected that the stricter standard would prevent more than 1,000 deaths and 3,700 cases of silica-related illnesses.

While the rule was originally slated to take effect this month, it will now be enforced starting in August. In a notice to coal mine operators, Trump officials cited “unforeseen restructuring” at NIOSH as the reason for the change.

The delay has alarmed public health experts who hailed the rule as long-overdue, noting that the dangers of silica dust have been documented for centuries.

“Miners may have the false assurance that this is regular dust, but it is very, very dangerous,” said Sunil Sharma, who treats black lung patients as chief of the Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep section at West Virginia University School of Medicine. “If these laws aren’t enforced and aren’t made stricter, I think we’re going to see a lot more young miners needing lung transplants and dying.”

But the delay drew praise from industry groups that challenged the rule in court, including the National Mining Association and the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association. The latter group had argued in a legal filing that the rule would impose “extreme costs for coal mining operators” and cause them “irreparable harm.”

The move comes as Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service - which stands for Department of Government Efficiency - targets MSHA field offices for closure as part of its efforts to save taxpayers money. The DOGE website calls for terminating the leases for a total of 35 MSHA offices, including seven in eastern Kentucky alone.

It is unclear, however, whether the administration intends to enact this proposal. Several MSHA employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, said they haven’t been informed about any plans to close their offices.

Courtney Parella, a spokeswoman for the Labor Department, said in an email that the leases “are still under review.” She added that MSHA inspectors “remain focused on MSHA’s core mission to prevent death, illness and injury from mining and promote safe and healthful workplaces for U.S. miners.”

Mounting Pushback

A growing chorus of coal miners and advocates is now pushing back on the cuts to these health and safety programs. Their efforts include filing lawsuits, lobbying lawmakers and pleading with Trump officials to reverse course.

Sam Petsonk, a lawyer based in Oak Hill, West Virginia, has filed a lawsuit on behalf of hundreds of coal miners over the suspension of the black lung screening program. The suit accuses the Trump administration of violating the 1969 law that established the program, and it seeks the immediate reinstatement of the fired NIOSH employees. The case is pending before U.S. District Judge Irene C. Berger, who attracted national attention in 2016 for sentencing former coal baron Don Blankenship to a year in prison - the maximum for a misdemeanor - for an explosion that killed 29 workers at his company’s mine.

In the meantime, dozens of staff at black lung clinics across Appalachia traveled this month to Washington, D.C., to meet with lawmakers. While the trip occurs every year around this time, it happened to coincide with the cuts, said Brad Johnson of Stone Mountain Health Services in Southwest Virginia, prompting concern from lawmakers in both parties.

Yet the two Republican senators in West Virginia, the nation’s second-largest coal-producing state, have offered mixed reactions to the cuts.

Sen. Jim Justice, whose family owns numerous coal companies, praised Kennedy for slashing the staff and budgets of U.S. health agencies. “I am in favor of cuts to waste across the federal government, and I’m sure Secretary Kennedy understands how important coal miner health programs run by the department are to West Virginia,” Justice said in a statement.

But Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said she expressed concerns about the layoffs during a phone call with Kennedy two days after the employees were fired. Kennedy committed to reviewing the layoffs on the call, a Capito spokeswoman said, although none of the terminated employees has since been reinstated.

In their own conversations with Trump officials, advocates have started making a new argument: These health and safety programs save taxpayers money in the long term. They note that while NIOSH’s black lung screening program had a budget last year of $466,000, the initiative prevented dozens of miners from seeking federal compensation for lung transplants, which can each cost more than $1 million.

“This all puts a finer point on the questions, ‘What’s the value of a human life? What’s the value of an Appalachian life?’” Laney, the fired NIOSH worker, said. “And unfortunately, it’s pretty clear to me that there’s a differential there.”