
An Epidemic Is Killing Thousands of Coal Miners - rozap
https://www.npr.org/2018/12/18/675253856/an-epidemic-is-killing-thousands-of-coal-miners-regulators-could-have-stopped-it
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gnu8
It's clear that no one should be working in a mine without at minimum an N95
mask and probably a PAPR (powered air purifying respirator). I wonder if there
is any reason at all, other than preserving corporate profit margins, that the
coal industry has failed to adopt simple and well understood industrial
hygiene practices.

Clean coal indeed.

~~~
adanto6840
Surely it's cheaper to provide this kind of protection (I assumed it would be
OSHA-mandated honestly) than it is to pay for the healthcare and/or lawsuits
that follow?

I admittedly haven't read the article yet, but it's surprising to me that
black lung / industrial air quality isn't something that OSHA (or similar) is
tasked with ensuring ample worker protections for.

~~~
parshimers
>In the past 30 years, the biggest coal seams were mined out in Appalachia,
leaving thinner seams coursing through sandstone.

...

>And because there's no coal, it is considered development mining or
construction. So sampling the air for toxic dust is not required, even though
it is the most dangerous dust. Former MSHA officials told us some inspectors
did it, but most did not.

Hopefully the lawsuits cost them. However the folks that make these decisions
never see the consequences; they've taken their bonuses and gone by now.
Furthermore the mine doesn't pay for medicare. We all do.

~~~
justin66
_However the folks that make these decisions never see the consequences; they
've taken their bonuses and gone by now._

It's worse than that. There might not be a company left when these guys start
needing health care in a big way. (Or the mine's environmental impact is
starting to be felt, or whatever)

That's normal: a mine can be structured as a dividend paying company (with one
big asset) that gradually becomes less and less valuable until it's worthless
at the end. If the company goes bankrupt at that point, no big deal, it's
already paid what it was meant to pay for its investors. And yes, management.

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munchbunny
I think it's a story we're all quite familiar with: in the absence of someone
keeping an industry honest, the industry tends to develop honesty problems,
because cutting corners makes the decision-makers more money, and the
externalities are just that: externalities.

~~~
munk-a
I think in the modern political stage we've forgotten that regulations on
industry is not a market distortion but a market correction (when done
correctly). Regulations exist to incorporate the costs of externalities into
the cost of doing business.

This sort of a market correction only receives criticism on an inter-industry
level (and possibly with regards to imports if the cost is only applied
domestically) because everyone in that industry is motivated to care about the
well being of their workers without suffering an economic disadvantage for
doing so (in fact, not caring is often a penalty beyond the cost to adhere to
the regulation to make adherence an economically sound decision).

~~~
Gibbon1
> we've forgotten that regulations on industry is not a market distortion but
> a market correction (when done correctly).

My argument is we've replaced a rich set of social controls with a single
unitary one; money. And then wonder why we're constantly dealing with mal-
externalities.

If you consider that human societies are complex and industrial ones even more
so, the idea that you can manage that with a single control input (money) is
ludicrous.

~~~
mindslight
Erm, the _entire point_ of a simple metric (money) is so that complex
processes don't have to be understood top-down to be managed. From first
principles, the more technologically complex a society gets, the more you
would expect its priorities to be weighed with money.

Now please, don't take this as an endorsement that we should let externalities
go unchecked, or even that governance should shirk basic understanding of
processes/industries and expect to replace that entirely with money. Nor do I
have love for perverse money-generating yet counterproductive endeavors. I'm
just saying the basic trend that you've characterized as "ludicrous" is
actually _entirely appropriate_.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
I can't think of a single instance, from the last 200 years, where money alone
has achieved the appropriate constraint of a process, product or industry.

All the significant milestones in health and safety have been from hard won
regulation _and_ money - not just taxation, but penalties and fines. Usually
accompanied by enormous effort and spending from industry to lie, cheat and
avoid said regulation being enacted, or having to comply with it once enacted.

Business has become ever more multi-national, taxation is gamed across
nations, trade deals have placed commerce above government, and regulation is
becoming ever less fashionable. Industry now feels ever more able to simply
move things out of sight, overseas to developing nations sub contracted to
members of their supply chain. All health, safety and environmental issues can
be dealt with via a simple press release expressing disappointment, but they
are, after all an "independent" supplier.

I'd say the last two centuries have proved that trend entirely _inappropriate_
for _everything_ except corporate profit.

~~~
gumby
> I can't think of a single instance, from the last 200 years, where money
> alone has achieved the appropriate constraint of a process, product or
> industry.

Money upset the mobile phone business which was a lazy cartel controlled by
carriers, who functioned as monopsony customers of phone manufacturers.
Europe's market was more dynamic than the the US and Japan due to regulation
but still the phones weren't amazing. Then about a decade ago Apple blew up
not just the design of phones but more importantly IMHO the relationships
between the end users, manufacturers, and the carriers.

I cite this as a proof that it _can_ happen but in general I think regulation
to manage externalities is underused due to ideology. Yet as a businessperson
I don't consider regulation inherently evil -- in fact, for example, a safety
reg which applies to everyone doesn't disadvantage any one company.

~~~
r00fus
How did money upset it without tech disruption?

~~~
gumby
It was a tech disruption. NeedMoreTea said a significant disruption requires
"regulation _and_ money" and while I agree in the general case, the iPhone is
an example that shows that "requires" is overstating it.

An existence proof that it "pure" capitalism can cause positive disruptive
change, even if that's a rare case. And I write "pure" in scare quotes because
Apple did benefit from a raft of laws and regulations (police, building codes,
court system, patents, etc) -- but not to a greater or lesser degree than the
other participants in the phone ecosystem.

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syntaxing
It's disgusting how coal mine owners doesn't even want to admit that it's a
problem. It's only a "potential" problem and the science isn't conclusive.
What a load of shit. Silicosis is a well studied health hazard. What do you
expect when you mine the earth and silica is everywhere in the ground?

~~~
avs733
Humans, all humans, are prideful. What you are talking about is admitting that
the job they have been doing for years and is their best hope of a decent
standard of living is literally killing them. That the red meat beliefs they
are fed about the evils of government regulation built on the threats of a
loss of that income.

On top of that you pile evidence about one thing. Sure it's true but this
isn't about a single fact or outcome or causality, it's about _conceptual
change_ [0] which is about changing one or more of the schema that frame how
we see the world. That is significantly harder and a lot of studies show that
evidence contrary to a belief not only is ineffective at creating it, it can
reinforce it.

long story short...the attitudes and reactions have very little to do with the
chain of evidence related to disease.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_change](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_change)

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ggm
Related problem in public health monitoring of mines in Queensland Australia:

[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-29/black-lung-report-
cat...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-29/black-lung-report-catastrophic-
failure-qld-public-administration/8568000)

Interestingly, the public health and epidemiologists they used for a lot of
this (the workers I mean) appear to be American.

~~~
cxr_ai
We've seen these kind of lung problems crop up with many mining companies in
Southeast Asia and Africa as well. Currently working on chest X-ray + AI
solutions to provide fast, affordable screening since the biggest factors
seems to be cost and slow turnaround time for radiologists. Feel free to test
out our AI algorithms below:

[https://app.semantic.md/classify/cxr](https://app.semantic.md/classify/cxr)

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Geojim
I file this one under memories are short, and dust masks are a pain in the
arse. Sure labour laws are wanting for your Appalachian thin seam coal miner,
but the union strong Australian industry had had a similar revelation, albeit
with reportable cases in the tens, not thousands).

Dust masks are totally effective. The main problem is convincing miners to
wear them, all shift, in the heat, and the humidity. The only effective
motivator I've seen for the industry are miners getting sick.

In my fifteen years of underground coal I've seen it go from crews where none
wore dust masks, to everyone wears them, and it's not like black lung or
silicosis are new to mining. And what's interesting is most wear them purely
out of self concern, the minority due to workplace health and safety rules.

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vondur
Pretty sad. That’s what killed my grandfather back in the 1950s while my
mother was a child. Can’t belie its still happening 60 years later.

