National Black Lung Association President Gary Hairston speaks in support of a new federal rule cracking down on silica dust exposure for miners at the United Mine Workers of America District 2 office in South Union Township, Fayette County, Pa., on April 16, 2024.
The Trump administration has doubled down on its delay of rulemaking that under the Biden administration had been designed to protect miners from black lung — days after fresh evidence surfaced that a long-term rise of the disease throughout central Appalachia is growing for underground coal miners who face futures of increasingly labored breath and stagnant disability benefits.
The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit to leave in legal limbo a Biden-era rule that would have significantly reduced the permissible miner exposure limit to toxic silica dust driving black lung incidence growth in West Virginia and neighboring states.
The court responded on Aug. 10 by giving the MSHA at least another two months to continue reconsidering the rule, keeping on hold a case that industry groups initially filed to challenge the rule finalized by the Biden-era MSHA in April 2024 but shelved by Trump’s MSHA days before the agency’s silica exposure limit was to take effect in April 2025.
The MSHA’s Aug. 7 request came three days after the publication of research in which National Occupational Safety and Health experts whose work had been threatened by a court-reversed Trump administration shutdown found that black lung prevalence among coal workers participating in a federal black lung screening program has reached its highest level in the past 35 years.
Meanwhile, West Virginia’s congressional delegation has been quiet on legislation being pushed by miner advocates that would increase black lung disability compensation for West Virginia miners.
“For far too long, we have allowed coal miners to become sick and die from overexposure to coal and silica dust. This regulatory failure is unacceptable,†Rebecca Shelton, policy director at Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center, a Whitesburg, Kentucky-based nonprofit law firm that focuses on mine safety, said in a statement. “But further, we have not taken action to modernize a long outdated black lung disability benefits system. We've allowed miners to be overexposed to dust, become sick and then offer them a benefits system that will not adequately support them and their families.â€
MSHA has supported leaving rule in legal limbo
The MSHA asked the Eighth Circuit Appeals Court to leave on hold the case implicating the silica rule, which as crafted by the Biden administration had lowered the permissible exposure limit for respirable crystalline silica from 100 to 50 micrograms per cubic meter of air. That limit was recommended by NIOSH in 1974 and is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s limit for non-mine workers.
The rule finalized in 2024 under then-MSHA leader Chris Williamson, a Mingo County native, followed years of pressure from miner allies for stronger agency protection amid a sharp rise in black lung disease among increasingly younger miners driven by silica inhalation.
But the MSHA drew the ire of miner advocates on April 8, 2025, by announcing it was pausing the rule for four months, six days before the compliance date set last year for coal mine operators. The MSHA subsequently submitted federal court filings opposing efforts by the United Mine Workers of America, United Steelworkers and American Thoracic Society to intervene in the case industry groups filed to challenge the rule.
The MSHA April 2025 announcement followed a federal court putting the rule on hold at the request of industry groups who argued it was too far-reaching.
In August 2025, industry group and Department of Labor attorneys said they were still discussing a potential settlement in talks they had reported to the court in June.
The court has granted time extensions leaving the case on hold since then. The MSHA on Aug. 7 argued a two-month extension was warranted in part because a notice of proposed rulemaking stemming from its rule reconsideration was estimated to be published soon.
W.Va. congressional delegation quiet on black lung pay hike
As the silica rule languishes, so has legislation in Congress that would benefit disproportionately West Virginia given its high concentration of federal black lung compensation recipients.
Introduced on June 30 and led in sponsorship by U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., the Support Our Miners Act, or H.R. 9556, would increase black lung disability compensation for miners in West Virginia and across the country, adjusting for what advocates say has been five decades of insufficient raises.
The bill would raise the federal black lung benefit rate from about $794 a month ($9,523 annually) to about $1,253 a month ($15,030 annually).
The compensation amounts have not kept up with the rate of inflation over time. The $144.50 level at which benefits started for a claimant with no dependents in 1969 is equivalent to roughly $1,280 now — 61% above what a claimant gets today.
National Black Lung Association President Gary Hairston speaks in support of a new federal rule cracking down on silica dust exposure for miners at the United Mine Workers of America District 2 office in South Union Township, Fayette County, Pa., on April 16, 2024.
MIKE TONY | Gazette-Mail
National Black Lung Association President Gary Hairston, of Beckley, quit mining coal in 2002 at 48 after his black lung diagnosis, said the monthly disability benefit has paid for less and less of his expenses over time.
“I’m glad that members of Congress are fighting to raise the monthly levels,†Hairston said in a statement released by regional environmental and miner advocacy nonprofit Appalachian Voices, “and I hope that the Trump administration shows it cares about miners by implementing silica protections.â€
But miner allies expect the Trump administration to weaken the silica rule, not strengthen it.
No spokespeople for any of the four members of West Virginia’s congressional delegation, all Republican Trump allies — Reps. Carol Miller and Riley Moore and Sens. Shelley Moore Capito and Jim Justice — responded to requests for comment on the Support Our Miners Act.
“West Virginian miners with black lung need their federal representatives to step up and ensure the monthly black lung disability payment does a better job at fulfilling the promise the United States made to miners,†Quenton King, government affairs specialist for Appalachian Voices, said in a statement.
Research underscores regional aspect of black lung surge
The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, a peer-reviewed clinical journal, on Aug. 4 published NIOSH-produced research finding the prevalence of pneumoconiosis — commonly occupational lung disease caused by breathing in dust — participating in the Coal Workers’ Health Surveillance Program has reached its highest level in the past 35 years.
The Coal Workers’ Health Surveillance Program, established through federal law in 1969, has been widely credited among miner health providers with saving and extending miners’ lives through black lung screenings it has provided to miners at no cost to them.
The Trump administration froze the program heavily relied on by West Virginia mine veterans last year amid sweeping Trump administration cuts throughout the federal workforce, but it was revived after U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia Judge Irene Berger granting a preliminary injunction in the case ordering HHS to restore the Respiratory Health Division within the NIOSH.
The NIOSH researchers found in the research published on Aug. 4 that prevalence among long-tenured, working miners in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia is roughly 32.5%, almost tenfold higher than in the rest of the country.
Among long-tenured miners working 25 or more years outside central Appalachia, the current five-year moving average prevalence of black lung disease is only 3.9%, the researchers found.
What black lung clinic representatives and occupational health experts say is driving the spike in regional occurrence of the disease is miners cutting into thinning rock seams and thus suffering greater exposure to silica dust.
West Virginia accounted for the nation’s second-highest number of federal black lung claims received in Fiscal Year 2025, according to U.S. Department of Labor-published data — nearly 8% of the state’s population. Pennsylvania had the nation’s highest number of federal black lung claims at 143,080, but that number represents just 1% of its population.
'[A] miner's right to draw a breath'
The United Mine Workers of America responded to the NIOSH research published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine by decrying the administrative delay in implementing the silica rule brought on by the Trump administration – and the decades of delay that had led up to the rule’s Biden-era issuance.
“Mining associations filed lawsuits arguing this rule hurts business, but what about the human lives destroyed every single day this rule sits on a shelf?†UMWA International president Brian Sanson, a St. Albans native, said in a statement. “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. Someone’s life is forever changed. A company’s profit margin cannot take precedence over a miner’s right to draw a breath.â€
The West Virginia Coal Association had argued in a September 2023 public comment responding to the MSHA’s then-proposed silica rule that the MSHA was planning to rely too heavily on engineering controls rather than personal protective equipment to target silica in a mine atmosphere, suggesting that the effectiveness of both approaches would vary depending on different mining environments across the industry.
But non-industry miner advocates argued otherwise.
The National Coalition of Black Lung and Respiratory Disease Clinics, in its September 2023 public comment on the proposed rule, argued training in proper wearing of respirators is “often lacking,†that facial hair interferes with the quality of respirator fit, and that there is “essentially no real-time feedback or means to determine†if a respirator is effectively lowering exposure to breathable dust.
The United Steelworkers in its September 2023 public comment urged that engineering controls be prioritized ahead of personal protective equipment and that respiratory protection never be considered as a primary means of protection. The union argued that mine operators rely too much on respirators to lower exposures.
In its statement Thursday, the UMWA observed that mask use hasn’t stopped the surge of black lung in central Appalachia, noting that masks alone can’t protect miners from the massive volume of toxic silica dust generated by high-powered machinery.
Heavy mask units limit peripheral vision and situational awareness while muffling vital crew communication and trapping heat, the UMWA said, emphasizing the importance of dust control and ventilation as miners are forced to cut through increasingly thin, rock-locked coal seams using high-powered machinery.
The UMWA called for the finalized silica dust rule to be unfrozen and enforced immediately – and for the rejection of industry requests to substitute personal respirators or job rotations for required ventilation controls.
“More needs to be done, and it needs to be done now,†Sanson said. “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.â€
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