Word: lunges
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...early 1960s, 50,000 babies a year died because they were born without a chemical substance necessary for proper lung function. Today, thanks to one Harvard researcher, such infants' chances for survival have more than doubled...
...even worse scandal, miners say, is a federal law that makes it nearly impossible for miners with black lung to collect disability payments. Congress drastically tightened up on such compensation in 1981 in response to coal- industry pressure and fraud among miners claiming benefits. In the past, miners with 15 or more years of employment were presumed eligible. That provision is gone, and miners must prove that they are totally disabled. In the two-year period before the change, nearly half of black lung applicants were approved. Now just 4% prevail...
...Black lung, a condition that develops after years of breathing coal dust, gradually robs the lungs of their ability to absorb oxygen. In advanced cases, patients are tethered to breathing machines that they carry around with leather straps or on caddies. When some patients travel out of town, they must calculate the distance and how long their portable oxygen tanks will last, as if they were living underwater...
...pressing their claims for compensation, miners are at a distinct disadvantage. Most lawyers decline to accept black lung cases because they know that claimants have little chance, says Dr. Mohammed Ranavaya, a West Virginia physician who has examined thousands of black lung patients. "It's not an even playing field, because you have a small-town coal miner vs. a big, resourceful company. It's David and Goliath...
...grandfather before him, he went into the mines. Twenty-two years later, he emerged as a man old beyond his years, his frail 112-lb. frame racked with a convulsive cough. Now 55, he is rarely out of reach of an oxygen machine. In his struggle to claim black lung disability, he is no match for Island Creek Coal Co. Perry never finished elementary school. A collector of baseball cards, he enjoys the pictures but cannot read the text. Island Creek has stoutly resisted his claims, arguing that his condition is the result not of working in the mines...