Word: lungingly
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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...
...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...