9 ms·

An Epidemic Is Killing Thousands of Coal Miners

118 points by rozap 8y ago

kryogen1c 8y ago
I've started implementing a rule in my life: if the entire conversation is unsurprising and predictable, don't have it. NPR thinks stronger regulations could have raised health of workers? Color me not interested. A more honest headline I'd be interested in reading: negative health implications worth raising national cost of living for this industry
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- KirinDave 8y ago
  I've long had a rule in my life: "When someone can only accept a conversation or submit to an idea if it is framed in ways that specifically impact them, then they're most likely not in possession of any idea or perspective worth sharing in the first place." If you're angry that a publication addresses a human problem on a human level because, it seems, you're upset about what fractional cents of cost it would have added per ton of coal on the market? You're not only frighteningly devoid of empathy, but you're also doubly wasting your time by reading the article then complaining about it here.
  - tCfD 8y ago
    The misguided belief that "if it can't be counted, it doesn't count" lies at the heart of all structural social conflicts. When complex reality is overcompressed into digestible, uniform units of account, whatever values fall outside the perception model is discounted to zero and lost.
    - avs733 8y ago
      I see the same property at the heart of the theory of disruption. Part of me thinks a safety first, collectively owned and organized coal mine would be a hell of a fun thing to try and create.
gnu8 8y ago
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.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  "Clean coal" was always a bullshit term like "light cigarettes". It was just a way to delay any real action.
  - fromthestart 8y ago
    Clean coal refers to scrubbing pollutants and possibly CO2 from emissions. It isn't necessarily bullshit.
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      It is BS because they never put anything behind it.
    - munk-a 8y ago
      Indeed, and to clarify "clean coal" isn't referring to cleaning the coal, it is referring to increased effort put into trying to reduce released pollutants when using the coal. There was a hilarious quote from a while back where a politician referred to train loads of "cleaned coal" heading out of Montana which created a misunderstanding about what clean coal technologies are trying to do. There is no "cleaned coal". (Aside, I believe calling those technologies "clean coal" is quite hyperbolic, but that is a separate issue)
      - tlb 8y ago
        Coal mines vary widely in the amount of impurities in the coal they produce. Low-impurity coal requires less scrubbing to meet a give emissions target. Sulfur is the worst of the impurities -- it becomes sulfuric acid in the atmosphere and is precipitated by rain, causing concrete to erode. The cleaner coal is called Anthracite [0]. The dirtier coal is Lignite [1]. Lignite is usually cleaned, by heating it up to drive out the water so it burns better (and weighs less during shipping.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthracite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthracite [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lignite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lignite
munchbunny 8y ago
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.
- fzeroracer 8y ago
  Well said, I couldn't have put it better myself. I see all these people clamoring for the return of coal and coal miners, yet the amount of miners dying due to entirely preventable causes is infuriating. We're willing to throw away anything and everything for the sake of making slightly more money for people that already have too much to count.
- munk-a 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    > 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.
    - munk-a 8y ago
ggm 8y ago
Related problem in public health monitoring of mines in Queensland Australia: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-29/black-lung-report-catastrophic-failure-qld-public-administration/8568000 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-29/black-lung-report-cat... Interestingly, the public health and epidemiologists they used for a lot of this (the workers I mean) appear to be American.
- cxr_ai 8y ago
  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
vondur 8y ago
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.
syntaxing 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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
aaron695 8y ago
We need to stop concentrating on individual causes and acknowledge all pollutants in the air we breathe in of certain sizes cause cancer. Be it mines or cigarettes or campfires or sitting at roadside dinning. The lie nicotine and chemicals from cigarettes caused cancer might have saved millions. But it's stopping the progress of savings the next millions.
Geojim 8y ago
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.

118 points by rozap 8y ago

I've started implementing a rule in my life: if the entire conversation is unsurprising and predictable, don't have it. NPR thinks stronger regulations could have raised health of workers? Color me not interested. A more honest headline I'd be interested in reading: negative health implications worth raising national cost of living for this industry

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
KirinDave 8y ago
I've long had a rule in my life: "When someone can only accept a conversation or submit to an idea if it is framed in ways that specifically impact them, then they're most likely not in possession of any idea or perspective worth sharing in the first place." If you're angry that a publication addresses a human problem on a human level because, it seems, you're upset about what fractional cents of cost it would have added per ton of coal on the market? You're not only frighteningly devoid of empathy, but you're also doubly wasting your time by reading the article then complaining about it here.
- tCfD 8y ago
  The misguided belief that "if it can't be counted, it doesn't count" lies at the heart of all structural social conflicts. When complex reality is overcompressed into digestible, uniform units of account, whatever values fall outside the perception model is discounted to zero and lost.
  - avs733 8y ago
    I see the same property at the heart of the theory of disruption. Part of me thinks a safety first, collectively owned and organized coal mine would be a hell of a fun thing to try and create.

gnu8 8y ago

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.

maxxxxx 8y ago
"Clean coal" was always a bullshit term like "light cigarettes". It was just a way to delay any real action.
- fromthestart 8y ago
  Clean coal refers to scrubbing pollutants and possibly CO2 from emissions. It isn't necessarily bullshit.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    It is BS because they never put anything behind it.
  - munk-a 8y ago
    Indeed, and to clarify "clean coal" isn't referring to cleaning the coal, it is referring to increased effort put into trying to reduce released pollutants when using the coal. There was a hilarious quote from a while back where a politician referred to train loads of "cleaned coal" heading out of Montana which created a misunderstanding about what clean coal technologies are trying to do. There is no "cleaned coal". (Aside, I believe calling those technologies "clean coal" is quite hyperbolic, but that is a separate issue)
    - tlb 8y ago
      Coal mines vary widely in the amount of impurities in the coal they produce. Low-impurity coal requires less scrubbing to meet a give emissions target. Sulfur is the worst of the impurities -- it becomes sulfuric acid in the atmosphere and is precipitated by rain, causing concrete to erode. The cleaner coal is called Anthracite [0]. The dirtier coal is Lignite [1]. Lignite is usually cleaned, by heating it up to drive out the water so it burns better (and weighs less during shipping.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthracite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthracite [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lignite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lignite

munchbunny 8y ago

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.

fzeroracer 8y ago
Well said, I couldn't have put it better myself. I see all these people clamoring for the return of coal and coal miners, yet the amount of miners dying due to entirely preventable causes is infuriating. We're willing to throw away anything and everything for the sake of making slightly more money for people that already have too much to count.
munk-a 8y ago
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 8y ago
  > 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.
  - munk-a 8y ago

ggm 8y ago

Related problem in public health monitoring of mines in Queensland Australia: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-29/black-lung-report-catastrophic-failure-qld-public-administration/8568000 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-29/black-lung-report-cat... Interestingly, the public health and epidemiologists they used for a lot of this (the workers I mean) appear to be American.

cxr_ai 8y ago
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

vondur 8y ago

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.

syntaxing 8y ago

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 8y ago
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

aaron695 8y ago

We need to stop concentrating on individual causes and acknowledge all pollutants in the air we breathe in of certain sizes cause cancer. Be it mines or cigarettes or campfires or sitting at roadside dinning. The lie nicotine and chemicals from cigarettes caused cancer might have saved millions. But it's stopping the progress of savings the next millions.

Geojim 8y ago

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.