Assault on Coal Miners Continues as MSHA Halts Enforcement of Life-Saving Silica Dust Safeguard

 MSHA’s Deadly Move Comes as Agency Sidelines Safety Inspectors, Black Lung Research and Screening is Cancelled, and Cost-Of-Living Crisis Intensifies

For Immediate Release: April 9, 2025

COAL COUNTRY – Today, the Trump Administration’s Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) announced it was temporarily halting enforcement of new life-saving measures that prevent deadly silica dust exposure among miners.  The news comes the day after the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked the implementation of the protections – safeguards long-sought by coal miners to protect them from exposure to respirable silica,  the principal cause of the resurgence of deadly black lung disease. Since 2009, miners and their allies have pushed the federal government to implement a standard to limit miners’ exposure to silica dust. But, now, amid a deluge of attacks on health and safety measures protecting miners, the life-saving rule has been at least temporarily put on the shelf. 

“Silica dust is killing miners and the only way to help curb the devastation of black lung disease is to start enforcing this rule. Instead, the Trump administration just gutted NIOSH, an institution that provided services that were essential to the enforcement of this rule. Rather than recognizing its mistake and working to reestablish NIOSH, the administration is doubling down on eliminating protections for miners and delaying this rule,”  said Rebecca Shelton, Director of Policy at Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center (ACLC). “Our country shouldn’t be asking coal miners to make further sacrifices just to save mining companies a few dollars. The ongoing attacks on mining health and safety are going to have real consequences in coal country in the form of more accidents, more illness, and more death. There is no justification for these actions.”

In addition to numerous attacks on the silica dust standard, the Trump Administration – via an announcement from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) – announced the closure of 33 MSHA offices in key mining communities. According to analysis from ACLC, more than 16,600 safety and health inspections were conducted out of those offices from 2024 to February 2025 – including inspections to detect coal and silica dust that cause black lung. These closures raise serious concerns about whether legally-required health and safety inspections can even continue amid the slashing of resources. In addition, DOGE eliminated hundreds of jobs at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health facility in Morgantown, WV and elsewhere, gutting research into the black lung epidemic, safety certification programs for respirators, certification of medical professionals who screen miners for black lung, and likely shuttering the Coal Worker’s Health Surveillance Program that provided black lung screenings.

“There are real consequences to these cuts and closures, and they are going to be intensely felt in coal country. When black lung rates get higher, there won’t be a mystery – it will be as a result of these actions to let coal operators do whatever they want while miners pay the price,” said Quenton King, Government Affairs Specialist at Appalachian Voices.

The silica dust standard had not been updated in nearly forty years before the Biden Administration took action in 2024. In that period of inaction, mining methods changed as larger, more accessible coal seams have been exhausted. Miners now must cut through more rock, leading to more exposure to silica dust that is 20 times more toxic than coal dust and causes the most severe forms of black lung even after fewer years of exposure. Based on scientific evidence, health experts and government agencies have repeatedly concluded that this silica dust exposure is a major cause of the black lung epidemic and that the outdated MSHA silica standard was woefully ineffective at protecting miners from this threat. Now, in Central Appalachia, one in five tenured miners has black lung disease and one in 20 has the most severe and totally disabling form of black lung. This led to an urgent push for an updated silica dust standard.

Over a decade ago, in 2009, Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center petitioned MSHA to establish a dust standard for respirable crystalline silica. While MSHA responded and stated an intention to publish a proposed standard by April 2011, the rule was never promulgated and a decade of inaction followed. In 2016, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration established a reduced silica standard for other occupations, but because MSHA oversees mining regulations, the change meant miners had less protection from silica than any other group of workers. In 2021, ACLC again petitioned for a silica dust rule and the rule was reportedly drafted and submitted to the Office of Management and Budget in January of 2023 before being finalized in April 2024.

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