August 24, 2026 - United Mine Workers of America President Brian Sanson is pressing the Mine Safety and Health Administration to immediately resume enforcement of the agency’s rule limiting miner exposure to respirable crystalline silica.

Sanson cites recent NIOSH research showing that nearly 1 in 3 coal miners in Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia with at least 25 years of experience have coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, commonly called black lung. That percentage is 10 times higher than that for the rest of the country.

“Every day federal regulators drag their feet and sit on this rule, another working father, mother, husband, wife, sister or brother contracts an incurable, fatal disease,” Sanson said in a press release. “Someone’s life is forever changed. A company’s profit margin cannot take precedence over a miner’s right to draw a breath.”

The Department of Labor’s most recent regulatory agenda includes proposed revisions to MSHA’s 2024 final rule on miner exposure to silica.

Issued July 3, the regulatory agenda listed July as a target publication date, but the revised proposal hadn’t been unveiled at press time. The new proposal “includes changes to provisions for exposure monitoring, medical surveillance and respiratory protection,” the agency says.

The White House completed an interagency review of MSHA’s revised proposal on Aug. 10, according to an Aug. 12 report from Politico Pro.

The final rule, published in April 2024, reduces the permissible exposure limit for respirable crystalline silica to 50 micrograms per cubic meter of air over an 8-hour time-weighted average. The new PEL is half the previous limit and matches the one established by OSHA in 2016.

Additionally, the rule increases sampling and enforcement at metal and nonmetal mines and requires mine operators to provide periodic health exams at no cost to miners.

Enforcement of the rule has been delayed because of a lawsuit in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. MSHA late last year announced its intent to reconsider the rule.

The National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association, which filed the lawsuit, claims the rule is “deeply arbitrary.” UMWA, however, finds fault with various industry arguments against the rule, namely those contending that personal respirators and dust masks can be effective substitutes for engineering and ventilation controls underground.

UMWA also calls for a boost in federal oversight, including more frequent unannounced dust sampling.

“More needs to be done, and it needs to be done now,” Sanson said in the release. “Miners are wearing masks, they are following rules, and yet they are still breathing in killer dust.

“We will not stand by while federal regulations are ignored and sat on while our members and coalfield workers pay for it with their lives.”