Photo: Gibson North mine, in Princeton, Ind. Federal mining regulators in December 2017 indicated they were reconsidering rules meant to protect underground miners from breathing coal and rock dust - the cause of black lung - and diesel exhaust, which can cause cancer. Timothy D. Easley / Associated Press

Episode for February 22, 2019

This week on The Allegheny Front, Reid Frazier talks with NPR reporter, Howard Berkes about an NPR and Frontline investigation that revealed that regulators didn’t act when they could have to stop the exposure of thousands of coal miners to toxic silica dust. Berkes and a team of reporters discovered there’s now an epidemic of black lung disease caused by that dust in Appalachia, including Pennsylvania.

LISTEN to the episode (29:00)