u/IamGlennBeck

>A new study by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has confirmed what miners, their widows and black lung clinic physicians have warned for years: the deadly and preventable disease has returned to levels not seen in nearly half a century.

>Published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, NIOSH researchers found 32.5 percent of sampled veteran underground coal miners in Central Appalachia—those with at least 25 years underground—suffer from the disease. The last time prevalence among miners with the same work history reached such a level was in 1978. In 2018, the rate was 20.6 percent.

>The new findings represent more than a fourfold increase since the disease hit a low point of 7 percent in 1999—three decades after the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969 established federal dust limits and black lung benefits.

>The resurgence has been driven by miners’ increasing exposure to respirable crystalline silica. As the thick, easily mined seams of Appalachia were exhausted, operators turned to thinner remaining seams, forcing miners to cut through far more rock rich in quartz. Silica dust can cause especially severe forms of black lung and is roughly 20 times more toxic than coal dust alone.

>Tim Balthis, a 57-year-old former miner and mine foreman, described working in silica-laden air to NPR reporters: “It’s like opening your front door and letting the sunshine [in]” with dust particles floating in the light, “and then multiply that by 10 billion times. … It’s like a fog.”

>Stone Mountain Health Services in southwestern Virginia alone has diagnosed 2,400 new cases in the past five years. A 2019 NPR/FRONTLINE investigation documented 21,000 instances of silica dust overexposure over 30 years.

>...

>NIOSH first recommended an exposure limit of 50 micrograms of respirable crystalline silica per cubic meter of air in 1974 and reiterated the standard for coal miners in 1995. The Obama administration’s dust rule, fully implemented in 2016, lowered the overall respirable coal mine dust limit from 2.0 to 1.5 milligrams per cubic meter but left the silica standard essentially unchanged.

>It was not until 2024 that the Biden administration adopted the 50-microgram silica limit NIOSH had recommended half a century earlier. Mining industry groups challenged the rule. Days before coal operators were due to comply in April 2025, the Trump administration’s Mine Safety and Health Administration announced a temporary enforcement pause, and the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals then stayed the rule’s compliance deadlines. The judicial stay remains in effect, and MSHA is reconsidering portions of the rule.

>On February 18, 1969, West Virginia rank-and-file miners launched a 23-day wildcat strike, forcing the state to recognize black lung as a compensable occupational disease and helping drive passage of the federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act later that year.

>The National Mining Association now argues that because black lung takes years to develop, current cases “do not reflect the conditions, practices, protections or regulations that are in place today.” At the same time, the industry has pressed for greater use of administrative controls and personal protective equipment, including respirators, when engineering controls do not keep silica exposure below federal limits.

>...

>More than 1,700 coal miners died from black lung between 2020 and 2023. Ending a disease caused by preventable exposure requires placing miners’ health and lives above the profitability of the coal industry. That requires workers’ control over the mines as part of the socialist reorganization of production on the basis of social need rather than private profit.

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>Amazon delivery driver Jaylene Vargas Gonzalez died on Monday, August 10, after she was found unconscious inside her delivery van near Fruitland Park, Florida. The vehicle had apparently remained motionless for hours without anyone from Amazon intervening. The cause of her death remains under investigation, but it is the latest death at one of the most dangerous major employers in the United States.

>Deputies were called to the area of Clark Road at about 7:22 p.m. after a resident reported that an Amazon delivery vehicle had remained stationary for several hours. Patrick Miranda, who lives nearby, told local station WKMG that he became concerned after noticing that the vehicle was still running. A phone remained plugged in and a backpack was visible inside, but he could not see the driver.

>Miranda said that when a deputy opened the front passenger door, the officer appeared to recoil from fumes coming from inside the vehicle. The deputy then opened the rear sliding doors and found Vargas Gonzalez unconscious in the back.

>Firefighters responded wearing gas masks and secured the area because of concerns that a toxic substance might be present. She was transported to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

>Authorities have not said what produced the apparent fumes, whether they contributed to Vargas Gonzalez’s death or whether another medical or environmental factor was involved. They have also not said how long she had been unconscious inside the van.

>Amazon closely monitors the movement and performance of its delivery drivers, yet the van had reportedly remained in the same location for roughly four hours before a resident—not Amazon or the company operating the delivery route—called authorities to request a welfare check.

>The company has long been a pioneer in combining high tech with brutal exploitation. A U.S. Senate investigation released in December 2024 found that injury rates at Amazon warehouses were more than 30 percent above the warehousing industry average in 2023, and that Amazon workers had been nearly twice as likely to suffer injuries as workers at other warehouses over the preceding seven years. More than two-thirds of Amazon warehouses examined had injury rates above the industry average.

>The death of Vargas Gonzalez comes amid a broader record of deaths and serious injuries among Amazon warehouse and delivery workers.

>...

>The high injury rate at Amazon is inseparable from the speed at which workers are required to work. Inside fulfillment centers, workers are tracked against production rates that measure how rapidly they pick, stow and move goods. Amazon’s systems record periods of inactivity and give management detailed information on each worker’s performance.

>Delivery drivers face another version of the same system. Amazon determines routes and delivery schedules through its software and subjects drivers to extensive electronic monitoring. Cameras installed in delivery vans track driving behavior and can flag drivers for alleged infractions, such as distraction, speeding or failing to maintain sufficient following distance.

>A Massachusetts Amazon driver previously told the WSWS that he had been penalized after the camera detected his lips moving while he was singing along with a song and classified him as distracted.

>The technology gives Amazon the ability to follow the progress of its delivery operation in extraordinary detail. That makes the apparent failure to respond to Vargas Gonzalez’s stationary van particularly significant. Amazon has not explained when its systems registered that the vehicle had stopped moving, whether anyone attempted to contact her or what procedures exist when a driver suddenly stops progressing along a route.

>Heat is also a serious danger for delivery workers, particularly during summer. Drivers enter and leave their vans scores or even hundreds of times during a shift, making it difficult to maintain a cool interior even when air conditioning is available. Amazon previously required drivers to shut off internal-combustion vans at stops under an “engine off compliance” policy but relaxed that requirement after protests over heat.

>...

>The circumstances of Vargas Gonzalez’s death remain unresolved. But the fact that an Amazon delivery van could remain motionless for hours before a nearby resident called for help makes clear that workers’ safety cannot depend on Amazon management, government agencies or appeals to politicians.

>Workers need rank-and-file organizations capable of intervening directly over conditions on the job. Safety committees elected and controlled by workers themselves should have access to information on injuries and hazards and the power to halt work where conditions threaten workers’ health or lives, without retaliation. Amazon warehouse workers and delivery drivers confront the same company and the same production system. Their struggle must be linked with workers at UPS, FedEx, USPS and throughout logistics.