Word: lunges
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...return. Many miners spend their lives crawling on their hands and knees in tunnels sometimes no higher than a yardstick, wading through mud and water, burrowing through unutterable darkness. Nearly every miner can name a friend or family member who has been killed, maimed or stricken with black lung disease. "You die quick or you die slow," says Hassell Butcher, chief of Logan County's tax department...
...miners' expense, relaxing the severity of penalties for safety violations. Corruption too has taken its toll on inspections. Last week dozens of coal companies and executives agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges that they conspired to falsify tests for coal dust, the substance that causes black lung...
...gentle and reflective man, Spradlin weighed the career risks before taking his place in the coalfields. Now, after two decades of inhaling coal dust, he tries to ignore a nagging cough but privately frets about black lung. Says his wife Ruby: "I think it's probably the most hazardous job a man could have. If he's late for dinner, I wonder what's happened...
Last spring the MSHA stunned the mining industry by announcing that the agency had found widespread fraud in its dust-sampling program, designed to prevent black lung. The tests are done to ensure that coal-dust levels in mines do not exceed 2 mg per cubic meter. The testing device consists of a small pump that draws air through a filter, which is sent to a federal lab and weighed for dust content. The MSHA said more than 500 companies at 847 mines had tampered with the filters. Civil penalties may reach a record $7 million. Last week 33 coal...
After initial doubts among federal officials as to whether funding for such a study was necessary, the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute last summer decided to provide the $10 million for the research...