Gary Hairston, a retired coal miner stricken with black lung, has spent almost a decade calling for stricter federal limits on the toxic silica dust that sickened him.
The 72-year-old from West Virginia has testified before Congress, protested at the headquarters of the Labor Department and urged the Trump administration to enforce a health rule finalized in 2024.
Yet today, airborne silica — crystals that can reach deeply into the lungs — continues to pose a threat to miners across the U.S. A Biden administration rule to impose stronger safeguards has been delayed and is now frozen under President Donald Trump, with the White House mulling a rewrite of the regulation.
The decades-long saga over how to protect miners is dragging on as clinics see a rising number of black lung cases in younger miners. At the same time, Trump is trying to revive the nation’s coal sector, from mining to burning it in plants across the U.S.
