Since 1970, more than 75,000 miners have died of black lung disease. Now, researchers working to prevent those deaths get layoff notices
As Anita Wolfe sat in the hallway of a Charleston, West Virginia, county courtroom, waiting to testify against the U.S. government, she thought of her dad, who first started working as a coal miner when he was around 12.
She remembered his wild stories about coal-loading contests and working as a mule boy. But she also remembered his death certificate, which listed black lung and silicosis, two pulmonary diseases related to dust in mines, as contributing factors.
Before she retired, Wolfe launched and ran a mobile clinic through the National Institute For Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) that screened miners at their mines and tried to catch lung diseases early.
In April, as part of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative, around 90 percent of NIOSH staff received layoff notices. Many were placed on administrative leave — including the mobile clinic crew, workers who review miners’ test results, and researchers trying to prevent these lung diseases in the first place.
Wolfe was in the courthouse to try to get those jobs back. Now, her mobile clinic workers are back, along with all the other workers in the institute’s Respiratory Health Division. However, researchers elsewhere in NIOSH who also work on prevention are still slated to be laid off.
To Wolfe, that’s a problem. About a fifth of the coal miners in Central Appalachia have black lung, Wolfe said. And from 1970 to 2016, more than 75,000 died. Nationally, a 2023 NIOSH study found that coal miners are twice as likely to die of lung diseases than nonminers. Wolfe called black lung and silicosis “entirely preventable.”
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