Giving Compass' Take:

· As coal miners prepare to go to work, Maya Wei-Haas at Smithsonian Magazine explains that the near-obsolete black lung disease is making a comeback even deadlier than before. 

· What are some effective safety precautions these workers can take? What are the risks associated with prolonged exposure to coal mine dust?

· Read more on the resurgence of black lung disease in US coal miners. 

William McCool was always a stickler for safety.

A 63-year-old retired miner from Kentucky, McCool wore his protective dust mask any time he descended into the underground tunnels. From his first day on the job in 1973 at Volunteer Coal Company in Tennessee to the day he left the mines in 2012, he would affix the mask firmly to his face—just as his father, who was a miner before him, had done.

Though many of his coworkers complained that the masks were clumsy to breathe through, McCool never questioned its importance. Every night, he would hand the mask to his wife, Taffie. And every night for 40 years, she would wash the mask clean, placing it in his dinner bucket for him to take to work the following day.

His precautions weren't enough. In 2012, McCool was diagnosed with advanced black lung. "We thought we were protecting our lungs," he says now. "[But] you can’t see the dust that really hurts you."

Black lung is the common term for several respiratory diseases that share a single cause: breathing in coal mine dust. McCool has the classic form of the disease, coal worker’s pneumoconiosis. Over time, his lungs had become coated in the same black particulates that he’d tried to protect himself against all those years. Their delicate passageways had become etched in dark scars and hard nodules.

These diseases are progressive, and they have no cure. More than 76,000 miners have died of black lung since 1968, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor. These include several of McCool’s friends from the mines, who died in their 60s. One friend has been put on a list to receive a lung transplant, which is considered a last-resort treatment. Even if he gets one, it will likely only increase his lifespan by three to four years. “If I live to be 66 or 68, that’s a long time,” says McCool.

Read the full article about black lung disease by Maya Wei-Haas at Smithsonian Magazine.