A Coal Miner’s Daughter Takes on DOGE to Protect Miners’ Health • Pennsylvania Capital-Star

A coal miner’s daughter takes on DOGE to protect miners’ health • Pennsylvania Capital-Star

X-rays of a patient with black lung disease. (Photo courtesy of the National Archives at College Park.) This story was originally published by Capitol & Main. As Anita Wolfe sat in the hallway of a Charleston, West Virginia, county courtroom, waiting to testify against the U.S. government, she thought of her dad, who first started working as a coal miner when he was around 12. She remembered his wild stories about coal-loading contests and work…

Sidney's Picks: How Black Lung Came Roaring Back to Appalachia

June 20, 2025Sidney's Picks: How Black Lung Came Roaring Back to AppalachiaPhoto credit: Miner’s Monument, Bernard Spragg, Creative Commons. The Best of the Week’s News ICE deported Pedro Luis Salazar-Cuervo to a notorious Salvadoran prison for standing next to a guy with tattoos. (Texas Trib) How black lung came roaring back in Appalachia. (NYT) The Senate’s budget reconciliation bill would sell off 40% of all public landand trigger a hospit…

How Black Lung Came Roaring Back to Coal Country

(New York Times) – Modern miners are contracting it at younger ages and at rates not seen since the 1970s. For 20th-century miners, it could take decades to develop severe black lung. For men of Aundra Brock’s generation, just a few years can be enough. Nationwide, one in 10 working miners is now estimated to have black lung. In the heart of the central Appalachian coal fields, it’s one in five. Often, their disease is more severe, the progressi…