President Donald Trump for years has championed what he calls the “beautiful” coal industry, even while he has been criticized for using coal miners as political props while ignoring policies that would improve their lives. Now, advocates for Appalachian coal miners say the Trump administration is literally leaving them in the dust — the toxic crystalline silica released into the air as miners break up rock to exploit shrinking coal seams.
Labor unions and advocates of Appalachian miners say the Trump administration is working with coal companies to shield corporate profits and delay enforcement of a silica dust rule meant to protect miners from black lung disease, a chronic and potentially debilitating condition. Despite decades of advocacy for tougher silica standards by multiple generations of coal miners, the dust continues to sicken workers. The already delayed rule was supposed to go into effect on August 18, but a federal court allowed another extension while administration officials negotiate with industry insiders behind closed doors.
“We’ve buried too many friends, too many fathers, and too many sons because of black lung,” said Brian Sanson, the secretary-treasurer of United Mine Workers of America, in an August 15 statement. “Bowing to corporate interests doesn’t solve the problem; it puts more miners at risk. The science is clear, the rule is needed, and the delay is shameful.”
In April 2024, the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) finalized a landmark rule that cut the allowable level of airborne toxic silica dust in coal mines in half, and required coal companies to provide medical monitoring for black lung. Miners and their allies began petitioning MSHA for the updated standard back in 2009 as tiny silica crystals that lodge in the lungs were linked to a well-documented and sharp increase in black lung cases across Appalachia, including among younger miners who were affected after fewer years of exposure. Experts say black lung is completely preventable and would not occur without exposure to coal mine dust.
Exposure to silica dust also causes lung cancer and kidney disease. The Department of Labor projected that the silica rule finalized under President Joe Biden would avoid at least 1,067 deaths and 3,746 cases of black lung among the working and retired miners. The rule was supposed to go into effect in April 2025, but the Trump administration and a federal court have now twice delayed implementation this year as the industry and Republicans in Congress push to scrap the regulation and send MSHA regulators to the drawing board.
“This is bureaucratic cowardice, plain and simple,” Sanson said.
The Department of Labor, which oversees MSHA, did not respond to a request for comment before this story was published.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health initially recommended the tougher silica standard 50 years ago. The proposal and other safety regulations have languished due to bureaucratic delays and opposition from coal companies and their wealthy owners, according to Rebecca Shelton, director of policy for Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center, a Kentucky-based nonprofit that assists miners suffering from black lung disease.
“It’s always a cost thing for the industry. That is always their priority no matter which way you turn it,” Shelton said in an interview with Truthout. “We’ve seen that with the implementation or lack of implementation of current standards and proposed regulations. There is always pushback about what it will cost the industry, and they have, often, a much louder voice than the folks who are paying with their lives, basically.”
The current silica standards have not been updated in more than 40 years, according to Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center, which was among the groups that first petitioned MSHA for the rule in 2009. Over the years of inaction, mining methods changed as larger coal seams were exhausted. Miners must now cut through more rock to reach smaller coal seams, increasing their exposure to silica dust.
As medical screening for miners became more available, the number of black lung cases began to rise in the 2000s following a record low number of reported cases in the 1990s. A 2018 study found that more than 10 percent of coal miners who have been working for 25 years or more have black lung. In Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia, up to 20 percent of long-term miners suffer from lung disease caused by dust.
“Every day that the silica safeguards are not in place is another day coal miners are exposed to unsafe amounts of deadly silica dust,” said Quenton King, government affairs specialist for the environmental group Appalachian Voices, in a statement.
The Biden administration gave coal companies one year to update their operations to ensure worksites comply with the new silica rule, which was scheduled to go into effect on April 14. Shortly before the deadline, a mining industry group filed a legal challenge and asked a federal court to block implementation of the rule, citing high costs for mining companies and uncertainty around the Trump administration’s sweeping staffing cuts to federal agencies. On April 8, MSHA announced it would delay implementation of the rule until August 18, a deadline that came and went last week.
Instead of defending the rule against the industry’s legal challenge, the Trump administration has since petitioned the court to prevent labor unions and a lung health association from intervening in the case and is negotiating a settlement with industry groups outside of court, which could weaken the rule or scrap it altogether. Last week, as August 18 approached, attorneys for the industry and the Labor Department filed a status update requesting more time to negotiate a settlement. The court agreed to further delay the rule until mid-October.
Shelton said the voices of miners are not likely to be heard during these backroom negotiations between the Trump administration and mining companies.
“They are not doing anything to fight the industry’s complaints in court,” Shelton said. “It appears that they are discussing their petitions and concerns with MSHA so they can come to the court with an agreed upon plan of action.”
Republicans in Congress are also backing the coal companies. On July 10, Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee advanced a bill along party lines that would prevent the Labor Department from spending federal dollars on enforcing the silica rule. Some Senate Democrats have called on MSHA to implement the rule.
“I hate to say it, but every Republican on the Committee voted to kill funding for the silica rule, putting miners’ lives at risk,” Sanson said in a July 10 statement.
On July 29, House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Tim Walberg and six other Republicans sent a letter to MSHA claiming the silica rule would impose “undue and excessive burdens on the mining industry.”
A review of an April 2 court filing from the industry groups by the Charleston Gazette-Mail found the profits enjoyed by coal companies far exceed the costs of complying with the silica rule. For example, Alliance Coal LLC reported in a filing that compliance would cost the company and its subsidiaries roughly $2.3 million in past and current investments to prepare for the earlier April 14 effective date, plus a $15 million one-time investment and $1.9 million in annual compliance costs. Alliance Coal’s Oklahoma-based parent company, Alliance Resource Partners, reported $4.89 billion in total revenue in 2024. The company also has $45 million in bitcoin holdings, a cryptocurrency.
“Lives will be lost because of these delays as coal operators seek to avoid accountability and as their partners in the Trump administration ignore the demands for action from miners and their loved ones,” King said.
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