The Dust They Breathe -- Black Lung Killing Nation's Coal Miners

(First of two parts)

FOR MANY COAL MINERS, black-lung disease is as much a part of their job as getting paid. But, according to an investigation, some of those miners needn't have gotten sick.

Hundreds of coal miners die each year of black-lung disease because many mine operators, aided by miners themselves, cheat on air-quality tests to conceal lethal dust levels.

And while the federal government has known of the widespread cheating for more than 20 years, it has done little to stop it, an investigation by The Courier-Journal shows.

"Yes, even a cursory look (at federal dust-test records) would lead one to believe that inaccurate samples continue to be submitted in large numbers," said J. Davitt McAteer, the government's top mine-safety official.

So, many underground miners toil in coal dust so thick that they eventually suffocate.

In 1969, Congress placed strict limits on airborne dust and ordered operators to take periodic air tests inside coal mines. The law has reduced black lung among the nation's 53,000 underground coal miners by more than two-thirds. But because of cheating, the law has fallen far short of its goal of eliminating the disease.

The number of sick miners is unknown, but government studies indicate that between 1,600 and 3,600 miners - and many retirees - have one of the disorders collectively called black lung.

In a year-long investigation, The Courier-Journal interviewed 255 working and retired miners in the Appalachian coal fields and analyzed more than 7 million government records. Unearthed was evidence that cheating is widespread:

-- Fraud: Nearly every miner said that cheating on dust tests is common, and many miners help operators falsify test results to protect their jobs.

-- Tainted tests: Most coal mines send the government air samples with so little dust that experts say they must be fraudulent.

-- Lax enforcement: The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) ignored these obviously fraudulent samples.

-- Dirty surface mines: Dusty conditions and cheating on tests are also common at surface coal mines, and strip-mine drillers are especially at high risk.

But coal industry representatives say cheating and dangerous dust levels are isolated problems. They blame most miners' lung disease on smoking. Although smoking is common among miners, medical research shows that coal-mine dust damages lungs in similar ways.

Evidence of fraud

The Courier-Journal has now amassed evidence that dust-test cheating is widespread and has existed much longer than the mine-safety agency ever alleged or openly acknowledged.

That new evidence includes 234 current and former miners who said they, or others they witnessed, routinely falsified tests. Common practices they described include running sampling pumps less than the required time or placing them in clean air away from working areas. Scores of miners said they had never seen a dust test done correctly. Just 21 of those interviewed said they had no knowledge of cheating.

Although some miners said they are bullied into falsifying tests, many others said they participate because they think mines will close.

"You either do it or the mine shuts down," said Elmer Causey, 43, of Viper, Ky. He left mining in 1992 with black lung. "And if the mine shuts down, you ain't got no job. And if you ain't got no job, you got no food on the table."

The evidence includes the finding that, in 1997, at about half the nation's underground coal mines, at least 15 percent of the air samples taken in working areas were almost dust-free.

"When you go to Louisville and have your lungs checked and you come up with second-stage black lung, and them (dust-testing) machines are showing it's dust-free, something's wrong," said Jerry Cornett, 40, a miner from Baxter, Ky.

And the evidence includes 25 former mine owners or managers who told The Courier-Journal that they cheated on the tests because they would have been at a competitive disadvantage if they had not.

"The health of the men never entered into it," said Gordon "Windy" Couch, 58, of Clay County, Ky. Couch was the safety director of giant Shamrock Coal from 1977 to 1992. "Controlling the dust just wasn't part of the calculation. Production was No. 1."

A lawyer for Shamrock said he wouldn't respond to Couch's accusations. The company has been sued by 19 of its former employees, who allege that cheating on dust tests caused them to get black lung.

Between 1972 and 1994, the deaths of 54,248 U.S. miners were blamed at least partly on black lung. The precise number harmed by cheating is unknown because many were exposed to high dust levels before 1972, when the strict dust limits ordered by the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969 went into effect.

But black-lung researchers said the lower incidence of the disease among British miners - who work in government-owned mines where dust-test cheating is rare - is strong evidence that hundreds of American miners fall ill because of fraud.

Black lung's grisly toll has been ignored largely because mine explosions and cave-ins have gotten most of the attention. But the focus on accidents ignores a simple fact: Black lung displaced accidental deaths as the principal killer of miners at least 50 years ago.

Only 30 coal miners died in accidents nationwide last year, making 1997 the safest year ever. In 1994, by comparison, the death certificates of 1,478 former miners nationally listed black lung as one of the causes of death, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

Two NIOSH studies of black lung's prevalence provide another picture of its impact. The last reliable study, done from 1985 to 1988, showed that 7 percent of miners had the disease. MSHA officials now say about 3 percent of miners have black lung, but that figure is based on an unscientific survey of miners who volunteered for chest X-rays from 1992 to 1995.

Although that survey was flawed, it did find numerous black-lung victims who had started work after the new dust limits went into effect in 1972.

For example, Ben Vanover didn't start mining until 1973. By 1985, after working for seven coal companies, he would often drop to his knees and lean against the mine wall to catch his breath. He quit. The Mine Act proclaims that miners should be able to work their entire adult lives - 45 years - without fear of getting black lung. Vanover, 57, of Stanville, Ky., made it just 12 years.

The Floyd County, Ky., resident, who says he quit smoking in his 20s, now sleeps with an oxygen mask but still wakes up gasping for air. In a recurring nightmare, he is being pulled underwater.

Vanover will join his father, father-in-law and generations of Appalachians who have died of black lung. This tradition has bred a fatalism in the coalfields that helps explain why miners help operators cheat and don't complain openly about dust.

How mines cheat

Underground coal-mine managers are required to test the air for five consecutive days or shifts every two months. They do this by pinning a pump about the size of a brick on the belts of miners who work in the most dust. A tube attached to a miner's collar snakes down to the pump - weighing 1 to 2 pounds - which draws dust through a filter inside a plastic cassette. A government laboratory weighs the cassette to determine the amount of dust in the mine's air.

Miners are supposed to keep the pump running for eight hours while they do their normal work. Most interviewed say they don't.

"I'm not going to lie to you," said George Bevins, 49, of Jenkins, Ky., who left the mines in 1992. "Most of the time, we just turn them off."

Often miners take off the pumps and hang them where the air is clear, they said.

"I've seen the men put them in their dinner buckets, and I've seen the superintendent put them at the power center where there is no dust," said Lenville Bates Jr., a 24-year-old miner from Thornton, Ky.

Many miners said they never get a chance to test the air because their bosses don't distribute the pumps. Instead, they said, tests are run in the intake air or outside of the mine - or not at all.

Many mines hire a contractor to supply dust-testing equipment. "The operator would have some contractor drop them off after we went underground," said Earl Shackleford, 37, of Wallins Creek, Ky., who was a foreman until he was injured in 1993. "We would never know they was there until quitting time."

Connie Prater McKinney, who runs a contracting company based in Floyd County, Ky., was convicted in 1995 along with a co-worker of doctoring dust tests for five mines. They put the samples in coffee cans filled with coal dust, shook the cans and pulled out the samples when they had the right amount of dust.

McKinney refused a request for an interview, saying she has put the conviction behind her. She still works as a dust-sampling contractor.

Some miners agree to cheat because of a simple threat: "If you turn them on, you are fired," said Crawford Amburgey, a miner for 30 years who retired in 1993 and lives in Letcher County, Ky.

But most miners interviewed said their foremen never threaten them directly. Instead, the mine superintendent or safety director weighs every sample. If a sample looks as though it might have too much dust, many superintendents void it and make the miner who took the test wear the dust pump every day until he gets a test that will pass.

Troy Weaver, of Coldiron, Ky., remembered the only time he actually wore a dust sampler correctly: "I got a bad sample, and they told me in front of everybody that I would be carrying that thing for the rest of my life if I didn't get a good sample," said Weaver, who worked underground for 18 years until 1991. "So I took it in there the next day and set it at the breaker box (in clean air) and got them a good sample."

Tomorrow: Taking a shower is more than a sick miner can handle.