Quoted By:
In the history of coal mining, black lung was uncommon until the 1950s, when continuous mining became the standard, replacing the conventional mining practice, still used in metal and limestone and salt mines, of blasting the face and then scooping up the loosened rock, which itself replaced the older pick and shovel method.
With blasting, there was time for the dust to settle before the miners went into the area that was "shot" (blasted -- they call it "shooting the face, i.e. the face of rock). But with continuous mining, using a continuous miner, the rotating drum put out lots of dust right by the miners working near the face, and so black lung disease started to soar in incidence rates in the 1950s and beyond.
In the 1970s and 80s, longwall mining, which actually dates back hundreds of years but with non-mechanized methods, became common for the biggest and most productive coal mines, and, again, the rotating shear put out a continuous stream of dust inhaled by the miners working near the longwall face. So black long became even more common. Most miners who worked on longwalls in the 70s and 80s died young from black lung, but improvements have been made since then with respect to dust control, like having the continuous miner and longwall system shoot out continuous streams of water at the face to suppress dust.
Today, there is a cluster of black lung cases coming from the Central Appalachian Coal Region, i.e. southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky, and no one knows why black lung is so prevalent there. I have heard from an expert that it could be something in the rock above the coal seam that they cut to make the mine taller; these are low coal mines with seams of around two feet, so they cut about an extra foot of rock above the coal seam to give the miners room to maneuver, though the mine is, as you would imagine, still extremely cramped. Chemistry studies on the rock in this area need to be done to figure out why there is this epidemic of black lung
