LEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER: Appalachian Group Calls on Biden to Protect Coal Miners Against Black Lung

The Vice President of the Black Lung Association of Southeastern Kentucky, Jay McCool, was interviewed for this story along with ACLC’s director Wes Addington.

“It’s killing people, that’s what is wrong with the miners today, they work their lives in the mines and 10 years later they’re dead,” said Jay McCool, vice president of the Black Lung Association of Southeastern Kentucky. “They need to fix it and make mines compliant. The miners are getting silica in their lungs, and they need to find a better way to control it and monitor it.”

Wes explained, “Before 2010, we rarely encountered miners diagnosed with complicated coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, or progressive massive fibrosis,” Addington said in a statement. “Since that time, scores of miners have come through our doors with very severe disease. They are younger and sicker than ever before and have been robbed of the life they hoped would follow their careers in the coal mines. A silica standard is long, long overdue.”

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