The U.S. House Budget Committee voted on Wednesday to approve a budget The invoice for the Federal Ministry of Labour, which contains a provision that facilitates the implementation of a newly concluded Rule is intended to reduce the exposure of miners to risky quartz dust.
The bill previously passed A subcommittee passed the bill in the full House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday by a vote of 31-25, with no changes that would affect the effort to stop the silica rule. The bill now moves to the full House, where lawmakers will have the opportunity to amend it before passage.
The draft budget, which governs the allocation of funds to the Department of Labor for fiscal year 2025, contains a line of text that prohibits the employ of any funds to implement the new silica dust regulation.
The federal regulation to limit the exposure of miners to silica dust was completed in April and most of it began to come into effect in JuneThe new regulation – originally proposed in July 2023 – introduces for the first time a separate exposure limit for Quartz dust in mines lowers the maximum exposure limit to 50 micrograms per cubic metre per shift and sets an ‘action limit’ when exposure is 25 micrograms per cubic metre per shift. It also sets out uniform exposure monitoring and control requirements for mine operators.
“The new silica dust rule is not perfect, but it is an important step forward in protecting the health and safety of hard-working miners,” said Brendan Muckian-Bates, a policy and advocacy fellow at the nonprofit Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center, in a Press release“However, this dangerous provision is a dramatic step backwards that would put lives at risk and allow the black lung epidemic to spread despite decades of efforts to combat this crisis. We need every tool possible to protect the health of miners, and we urge every member of Congress – especially Republicans in the House – who has miners and people with black lung on their voting rolls to work with their colleagues to remove this section from the final bill.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 20% of miners in the central Appalachians suffer from pneumoconiosis – the highest rate recognized for the disease in more than 25 years. One in 20 of these miners lives with the most severe form of the disease, and deaths related to pneumoconiosis are steadily increasing in Central Appalachia faster than in the rest of the country.
The disease is also being diagnosed more frequently among younger miners in the region than among their predecessors, due to the lack of easily accessible coal and the increasing amount of siliceous sandstone they must dig through to reach the remains.
“Miners with pneumoconiosis and their families have been fighting for years for protection from deadly silica dust. We know that people in the mines are getting sick faster than ever before because of silica dust, and we are grateful [the Mine Safety and Health Administration] “finally took action to facilitate,” Vonda Robinson, vice president of the National Black Lung Association, said in a press release Wednesday. “It is very disheartening to see a handful of politicians in Washington attempt to undo all of this tough work on a whim. If this policy becomes law, it will put the lives of countless miners at risk. Mining families deserve better, and we call on Congress to repeal this risky policy and get to work helping miners instead of making their lives even harder.”
