The Decibel - The Nova Scotia coal miners dying of black lung

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

Coal mining might seem like a job of the past, but global demand for it has actually surged in the past few years. Nearly 7,000 coal miners are still working in the industry. But the job is killing them. Inhalation of coal dust particles is leading to black lung, an incurable condition that workers describe as drowning in their own lung fluid. Worse yet, Canada doesn’t have a tracking system, which makes compensation difficult for many miners.Decades after coal fuelled Canada, miners are now being left behind. Greg Mercer, investigative reporter for The Globe, spoke to the workers fighting to have their labour remembered – and to protect future generations.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

My name is Wish Donovan. I was a coal miner here in Cape Breton for 32 years. So Wish Donovan is a tour guide at the miners museum in Glace Bay and he took me down into this replica mine shaft. Earlier this year, Globe reporter Greg Mercer met with Wish Donovan, in eastern Cape Breton, in Nova Scotia. Okay. You're going to take a slow walk up. You can't walk fast. You could hear Wish Donovan struggling to breathe.

When you're in a place like that where all all of the sound was removed except for a bit of running water You kind of hear this rattle in his chest and it's kind of this He just sounds like a phlegmy kind of sound that he kind of always has with him Especially when he's exerting himself just by walking it became very apparent that black lung was affecting him. Certainly take a break if you need one. I'm going to take a break. You want a guy with a black lung?

What do you got? Original deal. Black lung is also known as pneumoconiosis, and it's a terrible disease. All right. It's up to you. Yeah, I don't... And it was nicknamed black lung because that's essentially what it is. The black coal dust that you breathe in gets into your lungs and gets into the tiny air holes in your lungs and begins to fill them. And it creates like a scar tissue.

And so your lungs are constantly fighting against this foreign substance. And essentially what it does is it takes away your lung capacity. You know, miners describe that they're slowly drowning to death in their own lungs. And they have a severe form of black lung. Today on the show, we're going to talk about the human cost of coal mining. Something we still have to deal with, even as Canada works to transition off coal altogether. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Greg, thank you so much for joining me in studio.

Hey, good to be here. Thanks for having me. So Greg, could you tell me about some of the people that you met while you were reporting on this story? So I wanted to better understand what it's like to live with black lung and to do that. I had to talk to people like Wish Donovan and other former minors to just get a better understanding of what life is like for them. And what did people tell you? Like, what is it like to live with black lung? So it really depends on how severe your level of the disease is. And if you spent five years underground, your level of black lung might be different than

someone who spent 25 years. But for some people, it's incredibly debilitating. John MacArthur, who was a former coal miner and a union leader, he told me that one of the things he learned to do when he developed Black Lung was to carry a newspaper with him. It totally takes everything away from your life. It really does. Steps are the worst. Stairways are the worst. I'd go to a stairs when I was working with the, and I was going, I was on an airplane, going on an airplane, a lot of stairs involved. I'd walk up four or five steps. I'd have to stop. I'd use the newspaper to pretend I was reading. I wasn't

even reading, just as a diversion, because I felt embarrassed the fact that I couldn't keep up with everybody. And others told me stories of watching their fathers, who were lifelong coal miners, literally fall apart, being unable to walk across the room without having to take a break. I was mad all the time, mad all the time. And he'd stay here for about a minute to catch his breath from there. Like an eight-foot walk and he'd need to catch his breath. Eight-foot walk and he'd minute to catch his breath from there. Look, it's an eight-foot walk, and he'd need to catch his breath. Eight-foot walk, and he'd need to catch his breath. Then he'd go to the front door, open the door, and he'd go out and he'd sit there.

And on the way back in, he'd go to the chair, and he'd sit in the chair just like this. Sit in the chair just like this, and go. I spoke to another miner who just said, anything physical, this disease has taken that away from me. I can't exert myself at all. I can't even help people carry groceries, you know, into their house. And these kind of stories were repeated by families across Cape Breton who had someone who worked in coal mining. Do we have a sense of how many people actually have this disease right now? That's precisely the problem. In Canada, there is not a very good system for tracking and monitoring black lung, especially when people leave the industry and you're retired. There's no mechanism in place to test those folks. So there are estimates in the

U.S. that it's as little as one in 10 coal miners have black lung. In some regions like the Appalachians, it's as high as one in five coal miners have black lung. In Canada, the rates are much lower than that. But the belief is that's because of a poor testing system. But to answer your question, we don't really have a good handle on how many other than there's a lot of undocumented cases. Most people I spoke to agree with that. Why isn't this tracked more closely by the coal mining companies or even by the government? It's just the system that we have in place in Canada is not set up to track it very well. We have a very patchwork system that's province by province.

The rules vary slightly. In many cases, it's the mining companies themselves that do the testing. It's often mining companies that decide when a miner should go for testing. The testing is voluntary. So there are some miners who don't want to go because they're worried if they request it, it can hurt their employment. We also don't have any kind of national framework to watch the trends in this disease, to see where it's becoming a problem. So we simply have no idea unless you go province by province and look at the data. And the data has a lot of holes in it. Yeah. I mean, if this is being left up to coal mining companies sometimes too, I mean, you'd like to think they're looking out for their

workers, but ultimately usually that drive is profit. So it seems like this is not really set up in a way to benefit the people who might actually suffer from this. No. And when you go to the provinces to ask them about this, I mean, the province of Saskatchewan, like most other coal mining provinces said, worker lung health in coal mines is not our responsibility. It's up to employers to protect these folks. So it's just the way we've designed the system, and it's not a very strong one. What are the consequences, then, of not having a clearer picture of how many people actually have black lung? Well, the consequence is that people who have it, those costs are borne by our healthcare system, right? That they're a drain on our hospitals

when the cost should really be coming from the coal mines that made them sick. We know that it takes years off your life. We know that in many cases, there are a lot of families who've lost people because of black lung. And if that was the sole breadwinner, as many of these families are, it causes all kinds of issues. So yeah, it's sort of this hidden problem

that we don't really have a full handle on it because we're not monitoring it very well. So, I mean, it sounds like this, you know, their suffering here is really quite invisible in a way. It really is. And I think that for a lot of these former coal miners, it's not even about the money that they could get from compensation, which isn't a lot. They just want to be counted. I think it's important to them that their work is not forgotten, that coal mining really fueled a lot of Canada's growth for a very long time. And even as we move away from coal to cleaner fuels as a country, it's important to these miners that we don't forget them and we acknowledge the sacrifice that they made. We'll be back in a moment. Okay, Greg, let's get into the compensation for these workers because, you know, they really only got sick because of their jobs.

So what does compensation look like for them? So for those who get it, it can mean, and there's a scale, depends on how severe your lung problems are. But for some people, it might mean just a few hundred dollars a month in sort of a disability pension almost. For other people, it can mean compensation for any kind of medical assistance you need because of your lung disease. But it's not a lot of money, to be honest. It's not life-changing money. One of the more important parts of compensation is that those cases are counted. And because they're counted, we have a more important parts of compensation is that those cases are counted. And because they're counted, we have a more accurate picture of how many people have black

lung in this country. And so this is workers' compensation we're talking about essentially, right? Okay. And I mean, this must differ from one part of the country to the other. Can you give me a sense of that? Yeah. The biggest difference when it comes to black lung is that in Nova Scotia, they have a system called automatic assumption, which means if you worked in a coal mine for 20 years and you have a diagnosed lung condition, the compensation board doesn't dispute it. 20 years and you get compensation. In every other province, you have to prove the link between your lung ailment and your time underground. So we see that borne out in the statistics. It's really hard to get a compensation claim approved in BC or Alberta or Saskatchewan where most co-workers live now compared to Nova

Scotia, where if you've at least put 20 years underground, you have a much easier time getting a claim approved. Yeah. And do we have a sense of numbers, like how many people are actually getting this kind of compensation? Yeah. So to give you a comparison, Nova Scotia's system has approved more than 1,600 cases in the last 20 years through this automatic assumption. The other three provinces where coal mining is still done, BC, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, it's a few dozen in 20 years. A few dozen? A few dozen, yeah. So lung experts point to that and say, that's a problem. We know the number should be much higher.

And so the next question is, well, why isn't it higher? And why isn't it then? Is it because we're not screening essentially, like what you were saying before? That's one. There are people who have it who never file for a claim. And so if they don't file for a claim, it's never recorded. They just suffer through it. And two, the criticism of compensation boards in Canada is that they make it difficult to have these claims approved, right? That the workers have a really tough time proving

their case and getting a claim accepted. The science is clear. I mean, if you worked in a coal mine for five years or more and were exposed to coal dust, the chances of you having a black lung is very high. And yet we still, as a country, we make it very difficult on these miners to have those cases recognized. And what about some of the people that you talked to, Greg? Did they get compensation? Yeah, I met a number of former miners as part of the story, including Steve Drake. He worked as an electrician in the coal mines in New Waterford. His father was also a coal miner. His grandfather was a coal miner. Both of them died from black lung, but he knew early on he wanted to get out. After 17 years,

he studied hard enough and put himself through law school as a way to get out. After 17 years, he studied hard enough and put himself through law school as a way to get out of the mines. He became a crown prosecutor. He was a labor leader before that. But because of his training as a lawyer, he spent a lot of time after he left the mines, basically fighting the workers' compensation system on behalf of coal miners. And while he didn't work 20 years underground and didn't get the automatic assumption, he did file a claim and had to fight his way through and got compensation for Black Long. But in fact, his biggest fight with the compensation board

was on behalf of his father, was a lifelong coal miner who died. And on his deathbed, Steve promised his father that he would have his death recognized as having been impacted by black lung. And he was breathing very heavy, gasping. And I looked at him and I said, Dad, I said, you're having a bad lung day. And he said, yeah, it's pretty bad. And he looked at me and he said, and he knows how I am about things when I get a grip on things and he said when I die

I want you to I want you to get an autopsy a full autopsy on both lungs he said and I know you will not let the board get away with anything and I made my father that promise the summer of 2004 2004. When he died, the compensation board said Black Long played no role in his death. And so Steve spent years, and I think it was something like 10 separate levels of appeal to finally get the compensation board to acknowledge, yes, Black Long played a role. It took 2,109 days until I finally got the workers' compensation board to admit that my father's lungs were a contributing factor in his death. The Nova Scotia Health Authority, they admitted that there were errors made.

Most people don't have the time or the energy to go through that to get these cases counted. They simply give up. So, I mean, it sounds like this is actually really difficult for workers to get recognized that they have this and then also to actually get any kind of compensation for the fact that they have this. This might be an obvious question, Greg, but why don't the miners just sue the coal mining companies and get some compensation that way? It's a really good question. But the situation in Canada is that when we created workers' compensation more than a century ago, the big trade-off was that we took away workers' rights to sue their employer if they were injured on the job. When we created that

system, it was never anticipated that we would have this whole new raft of problems related to disease, not necessarily falling off a ladder or getting hurt on the job, but getting an actual chronic disease as a result of your work. And we've been talking about Nova Scotia in particular for a lot of this. What does the Nova Scotia government say about this? So, I mean, they are quick to celebrate their automatic assumption program, which, you know, you have to acknowledge that certainly it's compensating far more coal miners than any other part of the country. And Nova Scotia has also spent years trying to repeal the 20-year cutoff because it costs them a lot of money. I think they're aware that the legacy of

coal mining is pretty grim in their province, but there's also a hesitancy to make big changes because this costs the money. And no province wants to be known as the place that's really hard on mining companies because that's bad for business. So there's a lot that needs to be fixed here from tracking, how many people have the disease, to improving the system to get retired miners some benefits. But let's talk about, you know, not getting black lung in the first place. How has safety changed around that? Well, that's the thing. I mean, since the 1970s, at least, we've known how to prevent black lung.

I mean, it's not a secret. We need to monitor air quality, and that technology has been around for a very long time. And we know what the tipping point is. When dust particles become too dense, that's when we're supposed to do things to improve ventilation. So you improve ventilation, you monitor the air quality, and you make sure that workers have masks. Those are three things that mines have been able to do for decades. The problem is enforcement. So I guess, why is there no enforcement then? This seems like, you know, stuff like wearing

a mask, that seems like a fairly easy thing to do. How come this isn't happening necessarily? I think the mine operators know that the provinces are frankly not looking, they're not watching. And so a lot of things are happening out of sight. We also have a problem where when a mining inspector is going into a mine, they will alert the mine in advance. And so the mine can clean up its operation before the inspector arrives. That kind of stuff needs to stop if we want to get serious about protecting miners. So Greg, what about outside of Canada? Because we've talked about different provinces within Canada, but what about other countries? How are they dealing with this? Well, we don't

have to look very far. I mean, the United States has a national monitoring program for black lung. And the numbers that they are finding are quite alarming, frankly. I mean, thousands of new cases in recent years. In fact, they say it's the worst level of black lung they've seen in 25 years in the US. And they know that because they have a very robust national tracking program. We have nothing like U.S. And they know that because they have a very robust national tracking program. We have nothing like this in Canada. And this system actually sends mobile monitoring units out to mining communities around America and will test miners on the spot.

We don't do that in Canada. What do miners want to see changed? And I'm thinking specifically in terms of compensation, because this has been a big issue that we've talked about. What would they like to see changed there? I think that most miners you talk to want to see it easier to get these claims approved. Many of them complain about how difficult it is to get a claim actually through the compensation system. And they'll say it feels like the compensation system as a default will deny these claims and it will point to lifestyle factors and say, oh, you smoked for a time in your 20s. Therefore, we're going to deny your claim.

They would like to see that change. They would like to see the science that is that's not really in dispute accepted and recognized more by compensation boards. Just lastly here, Greg, I want to come back to the people that we talked about in this story. Wish Donovan, who showed you around the mine museum, right? Steve Drake, who fought the government for so long. John MacArthur, he said, you know, brings the newspaper with him everywhere to hide the fact that he has to stop and catch his breath. Greg, from what they told you, do they regret working in the mines? Wish doesn't regret the time that he spent underground.

Do you look at it differently now that you know what it did to you? You know, when you think about what it's done to your body and your lungs? Yeah, I think about it, but like I said, I'd do it again, but I'd probably look for a different job, you know. Yeah. And I'd wear a mask all the time. Time to mask. We did get the mask, it was too late. We all had it then, eh? Yet in the same breath, he'll say, I did not want my kids to follow me into the mines.

And he said, no, I want you to go and get an education and work elsewhere. He knew it was not good for his health. And yet there is a pride there that he did this work. So I think there's, yeah, there's this sort of tension there, I think, among some coal miners that this was hard work. They know it was hard on their bodies, but they're proud that they did it. Greg, thank you for doing this investigation and for speaking with me today. My pleasure. Thanks, Manika. That's it for today. I'm Manika Raman-Wilms. Our summer producer is

Nagin Nia. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrienne Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.