The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is sending a mobile lab to test for black lung and other ailments common to coal miners in Alabama. The CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Health has screenings scheduled in Sumiton today. Stops in Bessemer, Berry, Brookwood, Adger, and Tuscaloosa begin tomorrow.
A CDC release says…
“The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health will kick off the agency's annual mobile health screenings for coal miners this month. The federal program, in its 21st year, provides free, confidential screenings that support early detection of black lung disease, a serious but preventable condition caused by breathing coal mine dust.
This year's screenings will run from March through May in communities throughout West Virginia, Virginia, Alabama, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana. The confidential screenings take place in a mobile testing unit at convenient locations and include a work history and respiratory questionnaire, chest X-ray, blood pressure screening, and breathing test. All coal miners (current, former, underground, surface, and those under contract) are welcome and encouraged to participate.
"America's coal miners work hard and sacrifice to keep our nation running. These confidential, free screenings are an important way we can protect their health and reduce their risk of lung disease," said CDC's NIOSH Director John Howard, M.D. "If black lung is caught early, we can help prevent serious health outcomes, which is why it is so important that we bring these services directly to the communities that need them through our state-of-the-art mobile unit."
Screenings take approximately 30 minutes and are confidential by law. Each miner will receive their results in approximately 12 weeks. Appointments are recommended but walk-ins are welcome.
The Associated Press reported on the coal lung situation in “Trump country” back in November.
Lisa Emery loves to talk about her “boys.” With each word, the respiratory therapist’s face softens and shines with pride. But keep her talking, and it doesn’t take long for that passion to switch to hurt. She knows the names, ages, families and the intimate stories of each one’s scarred lungs. She worries about a whole community of West Virginia coal miners — including a growing number in their 30s and 40s — who come to her for help while getting sicker and sicker from what used to be considered an old-timer’s disease: black lung.
“I love these guys,” she said, wiping tears. “I tell them … ‘Every single one of y’all that sits down in that chair is why I feel like I was put on this earth.’”
As director of the New River Health Association Black Lung Clinic, Emery’s seen guys as young as 45 getting double lung transplants as disease rates soar among miners forced to dig through more rock filled with deadly silica to reach the remaining coal — far worse than the dust their grandfathers inhaled. A rule approved last year by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration would cut the federal limit for allowable respirable crystalline silica dust exposure by half to help protect miners of all types nationwide from the current driving force of black lung and other illnesses.
But, now, it’s in jeopardy amid other Trump administration cutbacks and proposals targeting workers’ health and safety guardrails: Stuck in a politically charged environment that promotes industry, with lawmakers arguing to change it and the federal agency that wrote the rule not pushing to enforce it. Some angry retired miners with black lung are fighting back, demanding that President Donald Trump honor promises he made to the people who voted him in.
The opposition comes months after Trump signed executive orders to allow coal-fired plants to pollute more and to streamline the permitting process and open up new areas for mineral production, including oil and natural gas drilling and mining of “beautiful, clean coal.” He was celebrated at the White House by smiling miners in hard hats, including some with West Virginia stickers, as he promised to put more people to work underground.
“One thing I learned about the coal miners: That’s what they want to do,” Trump said. “You could give them a penthouse on Fifth Avenue in a different kind of a job, and they’d be unhappy. They want to mine coal.”
But since his inauguration in January, a volley of firings, department eliminations and proposed regulation rollbacks have targeted hard-won health and safety protections fought for over decades to safeguard coal miners and other working-class folks.
The silica rule was delayed in April after industry groups suing the government filed an emergency request in court to block it from taking effect, citing costs and difficulties implementing it. Around the same time, the Trump administration told nearly all employees at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health that their jobs were being cut. That included those running a congressionally mandated surveillance program that certifies black lung cases.
But some jobs, including those focused on mine safety and research, have not been restored. And even employees who have been recalled say a lack of funding and loss of expertise in specialized positions, from chemists to engineers, have made it impossible for them to operate at the same level as before.
In addition, the Labor Department has proposed altering some mining regulations to weaken the authority of district mine health and safety managers that could impact ventilation, roof prevention and training programs.
The result of all these changes is that many blue-collar workers and first responders nationwide — from commercial fishermen and miners to firefighters and construction workers — will have fewer people working to help keep them safe and healthy while doing some of the country’s most dangerous jobs, many of them deep in Trump country.
In fact, the two reddest states in America — Wyoming and West Virginia — had the highest overall worker death rates in 2023, according to the latest government figures. Together they experienced more than a dozen fatalities in the mining, quarrying and oil and gas sector that year.
As a United Steelworkers union leader representing about 700 trona miners in Wyoming, Marshal Cummings worries the little-known white powdery rock he digs — used in everything from glass and detergents to paper — could be making workers sick. He helped push for the silica rule to cover miners like him, offering them the same free health screenings as coal miners, and was forced to wait for researchers from NIOSH to investigate air quality at his site after a request he filed was initially killed by the layoffs.
“We got promised that we were going to make America great again, make America healthy again,” Cummings said at the time.
“You should be making these cuts with the scalpel,” he added. “You shouldn’t be using a chainsaw and chunking out all these things because you’re impacting workers.”
On the other side of the country, Emery sits in her office off a busy highway nestled amid West Virginia’s breathtaking mountains and whitewater rivers that attract tourists from across the world. Data collected from her clinic along with more than two dozen others nationwide, spell out what she sees in real time every day: Of the 11,500 coal miners from central Appalachia with X-rays analyzed by NIOSH-certified readers from mid-2020 through mid-2025, 55% had some form of black lung with the highest annual rate — 62% — recorded among miners seen in the past year, according to researcher Kirsten Almberg at the University of Illinois Chicago. That compares to 41% elsewhere in the U.S. over the same five-year period.
