ST. PAUL – “When I come to Southwest Virginia I get an earful,” Virginia Democratic U.S. Senator Mark Warner said during a town hall meeting appearance in St. Paul Monday.
Much of that earful came from advocates for black lung victims impacted by recent cuts to coal workers’ health programs in the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health.
Warner was on the first stop of a three-day round of meetings with community officials and residents from St. Paul to Salem, meeting with the Coalfields Expressway Authority, elected officials from Pound and Russell County.
National Black Lung Association Virginia Vice President Vonda Robinson joined clinic operators Marcy Tate and Dr. James Crum, along with six black lung victims at the meeting about concerns raised last week by Warner, fellow Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine and Republican Ninth District Congressman Morgan Griffith over the firing of more than 850 NIOSH staffers.
The affected NIOSH employees include those responsible for enforcing a now delayed silica dust level rule for miners’ health, a five-decade medical program to monitor miners for signs of black lung and the training and certification of radiology B-readers to diagnose black lung cases from X-rays.
Warner acknowledged that NIOSH’s research and monitoring work had detected a “dramatic uptick” of black lung and silica related silicosis – complicated black lung – among a younger segment of miners in recent years.
“The president said he wants to try and see if we can see a little bit of a rebirth in the coal industry,” said Warner. “What’s disturbing to me is that, after he announced that, a day later they came in and fired everybody in mine safety. The whole notion, that if you take out all the federal workers who are supposed to work on mine safety, seems to be a contradiction.”
Crum, who oversees United Medical Clinic in Pikeville, Kentucky – the largest privately-operated, certified black lung treatment clinic in Kentucky – told Warner that lung transplants have become a growing need for many black lung patients.
A 2020 video produced by NIOSH – “Faces of Black Lung II” – featured three miners in their 30s and 40s, Crum said. Two of the miners are younger than Crum and already have had transplants, he said, The third – in his 30s — died before getting a transplant.
“We have significant amounts of black lung in Appalachia, so much that our transplants are essentially doubling every year,” said Crum. “The effective elimination of (NIOSH) in a community which already has limited healthcare, especially from a pulmonary standpoint, is significantly detrimental to the entire community.”
Warner said the U.S. made a postwar commitment to take care of coal miners’ health care and benefits.
“You have Mr. Musk and his DOGE boys, and these guys are 22, 23-year old techies,” said Warner. “They probably didn’t know what NIOSH even meant. The only way we’re going to have some of these things stopped is if those folks at every level of government who feel there’s nothing partisan about black lung, have got to let people know.”
Warner said he worried that a program affecting a relatively small segment of the American public is going to get lost in the news of other Department of Government Efficiency and Trump administration cuts.
“There’s so much stuff happening every day they’re throwing against the wall that get overlooked,” Warner said. “You have my commitment to get back the funding. If there’s things we can do from my office to further promote this, please tell me.”
Statistics are not enough to make a public case for black lung programs, Warner added.
“We need miners and families who have been affected to tell their story on a video,” Warner said. “We’ve got to think about telling these stories in a different way.”
Marcy Tate of New Beginnings Pulmonary Rehab told Warner she was going to give the eulogy at the funeral of one of her clinic patients after the town hall meeting. Pushback from federal agencies in recent months on black lung benefits claims and funding treatment has grown, she added.
“There’s two options for black lung victims,” Tate – also President of the National Black Lung Association’s Virginia chapter — said of the irreversible and progressive disease. “Get a lung transplant or die. It’s one thing to be a friend of coal, but until you become a friend of the coal miner it’s broken.
“This is not charity,” Warner said of black lung programs and other federal services. “This is why you pay taxes.”
Virginia NBLA Vice President Vonda Robinson brought her husband and five other victims of complicated black lung – caused by a combination of coal and silica dust – to Monday’s meeting.
“We have an epidemic here in Southwest Virginia,” said Robinson, “and now we’re going to have coal more than we ever had it. With what Trump has done, there was not one thing about safety. Not one thing. If we do not take care of our miners and make sure they can come home every evening to their families and live a life … these guys here are deathly sick from silicosis.”
Robinson criticized the Trump administration’s delay in implementing silica rule dust restrictions.
“We have got to have safety, and it’s got to be regulated,” Robinson said of the silica rule. “They delayed it to August 18 and It’s a slap in the face to these coal miners. These coal miners are why we have these lights and have what we had. It’s time that the Unites States wake up and say, ‘Hey, listen, we’re going to take care of these guys.’ We’re not going to get them at 30 years old and getting complicated black lung.”
Robinson and Crum each said they are concerned about the B-readers program shutdown.
“What’s going to happen if we run out of B-readers if their licenses expire?” said Robinson. “We’re not going to have any B-readers. What are we going to do?”
Referring to the shutdown of NIOSH’s Coal Workers Health Surveillance program and other medical research handled through the Department of Health and Human Services, Warner said shutdowns to those programs means research work will have to start again.
“If they take much out of Medicaid,” Warner added, “there won’t be any rural hospitals left. I hope calmer heads will prevail, but it’s a challenging time.”
A unified stand by all congressional delegation members in all mining states is needed to stop DOGE-Trump cuts to mine health and safety programs, Warner added.