October 12, 2025 - Some 80 people attended the annual National Black Lung Association conference here Oct. 3, the first time it’s been held in Virginia. “We demand the Department of Labor enforce the new silica rule,” Vonda Robinson, vice president of the association, told the Militant after the meeting ended. From Virginia, she had organized the meeting.

“Association members discussed plans to take their fight and protest to Washington, D.C., Oct. 14. Vans are being organized from Virginia and West Virginia and members are coming from Kentucky.

“The Department of Labor and coal companies have fought against the implementation of the silica rule. It’s been postponed two times,” Robinson said. “We’ll have signs outside the DOL to get their attention and we’ve contacted the news.” The meeting agreed to go ahead with the protest regardless of the ongoing federal government shutdown.

The rally is a joint effort with the United Mine Workers of America.  UMWA President Cecil Roberts will speak, along with a doctor who treats black lung patients at a clinic in the Virginia coalfields.

After years of pressure from the National Black Lung Association and others, the Mine Safety and Health Administration in April 2024 announced a new “silica rule” that would cut in half the amount of silica dust miners can be exposed to. However, implementation of the rule has been postponed.

As bosses push to extract profit from thinning coal seams, miners have to cut through ever-thicker layers of rock, releasing silica into the air and their lungs. Breathing the coal and silica dust can create a hybrid disease that leads to progressive massive fibrosis, a deadly form of black lung.

Overturning Cuts at NIOSH

Robinson also spoke about the fight to overturn government job cuts, including at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, that are hurting the effort to combat black lung. “We got NIOSH back to work,” she said. The National Black Lung Association, mine workers union, and black lung clinics were successful in reversing some layoffs at NIOSH.

“Figures for black lung were going down, now they are going up. The coal companies only care about mining more coal,” NBLA President Gary Hairston told the Militant. This is the why the association will be redoubling its effort to press for the new silica rule to be put into effect.

“The senators won’t talk to us. They send out a staff rep,” Hairston said. “We want to see what the eyes tell us. They don’t respect working people.”

Working people active in NBLA chapters from Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia — including miners, retired and working, and widows and spouses of miners with black lung — attended the conference, along with medical clinic personnel from those states plus Ohio.

The highlight of the morning session was a presentation by Dr. James Brandon Crum, a radiologist with a black lung clinic in Pikeville, Kentucky. He said it’s right in the bull’s eye for the highest concentrations of black lung cases in the U.S.

Crum debunked common misconceptions about black lung — that it occurs mainly among older miners, is usually related to smoking, that there is no treatment, and that it isn’t that common anymore with modern mining practices. “Silica is a big factor,” he said, “but not the only factor; almost all dust is mixed dust.” But that the coal operators want to blame it on anything other than coal dust.

Crum pointed out the disease can progress long after workers are no longer actively working in the mines. He stressed the importance of continuing to monitor miners’ health, including through X-rays and CAT scans, to follow the degree of the disease.

His clinic has done studies on hundreds of miners. One study showed 10% of miners he examined had what is referred to as “complicated” black lung, and over half of these are more serious cases. Crum said this is the result of the failure of prevention and protection by the employers and the government.