Opinion | Deep Inside Mountains, Work Is Getting Much More Dangerous

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

51% : Though the town has shrunk to a population of 72, coal miners from across Appalachia -- including Virginia, Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee -- are now flocking there to seek care at Stone Mountain Health Services, a community health clinic that includes the nation's largest black lung clinic, where I serve as black lung medical director.
47% : But with changes in technology and conditions in coal mines in central Appalachia, cases of severe black lung disease are back to the highest level in decades after the last major study, in 2018.
47% : Because the government's safety standards -- which rely, in part, on coal companies to police themselves -- haven't kept up with the latest working conditions in mines and don't sufficiently limit exposure to the biggest hazard of all: silica.
44% : John Robinson spent over two years tunneling through 3,200 feet of rock using drills and dynamite to reach coal in Dickenson County, Va., a few miles from the border with Kentucky.
40% : If we continue to rely on coal companies to do their own dust sampling without adequate enforcement, black lung deaths will almost certainly continue to climb.

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