{"id":4272,"date":"2024-04-16T12:45:06","date_gmt":"2024-04-16T12:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=4272"},"modified":"2024-04-16T13:27:17","modified_gmt":"2024-04-16T13:27:17","slug":"u-s-to-limit-deadly-mining-dust-as-black-lung-resurges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=4272","title":{"rendered":"U.S. to Limit Deadly Mining Dust as Black Lung Resurges"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Federal regulation capping toxic airborne silica has been decades in the making. The delay has cost miners dearly.<\/p>\n

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Federal regulators on Tuesday will issue new protections for miners against a type of dust long known to cause deadly lung ailments \u2014 changes recommended by government researchers a half-century ago.<\/p>\n

Mining companies will have to limit concentrations of airborne silica, a mineral commonly found in rock that can be lethal when ground up and inhaled. The new requirements will affect more than 250,000 miners extracting coal, a variety of metals, and minerals used in products like cement and smartphones. Tuesday\u2019s announcement is the culmination of a tortuous regulatory process that has spanned four presidential administrations.<\/p>\n

Miners have paid dearly for the delay. As progress on the rule stalled, government researchers documented with growing alarm a resurgence of severe black lung afflicting younger coal miners, and studies implicated poorly controlled silica as the likely cause.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt should shock the conscience to know that there\u2019s people in this country that do incredibly hard work that we all benefit from that are already disabled before they reach the age of 40,\u201d said Chris Williamson, head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, which is issuing the rule. \u201cWe knew that the existing standard was not protective enough.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The new requirements are to be announced by Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su at an event in Pennsylvania Tuesday morning. They come eight years after a sister agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, issued similar protections for workers in other industries, such as construction, countertop manufacturing and fracking.<\/p>\n

Both mine safety advocates and industry groups generally support the rule\u2019s central change: halving the allowed concentration of silica dust. But their views on the rule, proposed<\/a> last July, diverge sharply over enforcement, with mining trade groups arguing that the requirements are unnecessarily broad and costly, and miners\u2019 advocates cautioning that companies are largely left to police themselves.<\/p>\n

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Federal regulation capping toxic airborne silica has been decades in the making. The delay has cost miners dearly.Federal regulators on Tuesday will issue new protections for miners against a type of dust long known to cause deadly lung ailments \u2014 changes recommended by government researchers a half-century ago.Mining companies will have to limit concentrations of airborne silica, a mineral commonly found in rock that can be lethal when ground up and inhaled. The new requirements will affect more than 250,000 miners extracting coal, a variety of metals, and minerals used in products like cement and smartphones. Tuesday\u2019s announcement is the culmination of a tortuous regulatory process that has spanned four presidential administrations.Miners have paid dearly for the delay. As progress on the rule stalled, government researchers documented with growing alarm a resurgence of severe black lung afflicting younger coal miners, and studies implicated poorly controlled silica as the likely cause.\u201cIt should shock the conscience to know that there\u2019s people in this country that do incredibly hard work that we all benefit from that are already disabled before they reach the age of 40,\u201d said Chris Williamson, head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, which is issuing the rule. \u201cWe knew that the existing standard was not protective enough.\u201dThe new requirements are to be announced by Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su at an event in Pennsylvania Tuesday morning. They come eight years after a sister agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, issued similar protections for workers in other industries, such as construction, countertop manufacturing and fracking.Both mine safety advocates and industry groups generally support the rule\u2019s central change: halving the allowed concentration of silica dust. But their views on the rule, proposed last July, diverge sharply over enforcement, with mining trade groups arguing that the requirements are unnecessarily broad and costly, and miners\u2019 advocates cautioning that companies are largely left to police themselves.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4274,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4272"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4275,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4272\/revisions\/4275"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}