In 1930 widespread unemployment persists. Five thousand laborers flock to work on Hawks Nest Tunnel. Working in 15-hour shifts over 18 months, they drill 32-foot diameter tunnel 3.8 miles in length through Gauley Mountain. Tunnel diverts New River to hydroelectric plant near Gauley Bridge, West Virginia.
Cutting tunnel through rock exposes unprotected workers to respirable crystalline silica dust. Historical marker notes 109 deaths. A 1936 congressional report proclaims 476 deaths due to tunnel work. Other sources assert as many as 1,000 laborers die from silicosis. Silicosis is lung disease usually associated with stonecutters.
Fast forward to June 2025, New York Times article ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œHow Black Lung Came Roaring Back to Coal CountryÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥ by Kate Morgan reports troubling trend. When analyzing 13 miners, Robert Cohen (pulmonologist from University of Illinois Chicago) finds only one with black lung but twelve with silicosis.
Charles Thacker (69-year-old miner from Norton, Virginia) observes, ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œYou can tell thereÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s silica (in air) when you see the flicker in it. It looks like bits of glass flashing in the light. ItÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s almost pretty. But thatÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s what gets in your lungs and cuts you up.ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥
Cohen and others find more miner silica exposure than in past. TodayÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s coal mining regularly encounters coal encased in rock layers. Long working hours, more powerful machinery pulverizing quartz (or sandstone) into powder and diminishing rich coal seams increase dust exposures.
Miners, at younger ages and at rates not occurring since 1970s, experience damage to their lungs. Doctors find larger masses and scarring. Lung transplants, disability claims and deaths rise. Scott Laney (epidemiologist from NIOSH) observes ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œYou donÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™t get 30- and 40-something-year-old men on bilateral lung transplant evaluations if they arenÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™t breathing toxic dust.ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥ He notes ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œthat young men entering the work force as coal miners will not have the same health system afforded them that their dads and their dadsÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™ dads had.ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥
