Chris Hamby and the Center for Public Integrity have already given us a couple of remarkable stories this week (see here and here) about black lung disease, and they’ve done so again today.  Part 3 of their series, Breathless and Burdened, is headlined, As experts recognize new form of black lung, coal industry follows familiar pattern of denial.  It starts off with the story of Ted Latusek:

For almost two decades, his breathing has been so bad he’s been considered totally disabled. Even his former employer, the coal giant Consol Energy, does not dispute those points.

Nineteen years after he first filed for federal black lung benefits, however, his case remains unresolved. What’s really causing his impairment, doctors testifying for Consol contend, is a completely different and unrelated disease. To win his case, the former miner must show that his disability is caused by black lung.

Though parts of his lungs show the dark nodules typical of the classic form of black lung, all doctors agree that his biggest problem is elsewhere, in the parts of his lungs that show severe scarring with a different pattern.

His case file, spread in piles, covers a conference table, but all of the medical reports, depositions, hearings, briefs and rulings center on one question: What caused the abnormal scarring that has consumed large portions of his lungs?

The fight over the answer to that question goes to the heart of the newest battle in a longstanding war between companies and miners. Latusek’s legal tussle is the signal case in the latest effort by the coal industry to deny emerging scientific evidence and contain its liabilities, a strategy that has played out repeatedly over more than a century and locked multitudes of miners out of the benefits system … 

The story continues:

Since Latusek first filed his claim in 1994, research increasingly has shown that coal and silica — the toxic mineral in much of the rock in mines — can cause the pattern of scarring he has. Government researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), as well as other independent doctors, have linked the pattern to coal mining.

“It’s certainly related to their work,” said David Weissman, head of NIOSH’s division of respiratory disease studies. “We’re confident of that.”

Yet, while other variants of black lung are defined explicitly in Labor Department regulations, Latusek’s form is not, and doctors paid by the coal industry continue to testify that there is no evidence of any connection between mining and this form of disease. This leaves the complex medical issue to be argued case by case in the benefits system, which is often ill-equipped to address emerging science and typically favors coal companies and the well-paid consulting doctors they enlist.

Chris explains:

“Black lung” is not just one disease. Rather, it is a blanket term for a variety of lung diseases caused by breathing coal dust. As science has implicated coal dust as the cause of an increasing array of medical problems during the past century, coal companies have resisted, knowing broader recognition of the true effects of mining coal could place them on the hook for compensating more sick miners.

The coal industry’s reaction to the potential expansion of its liabilities has followed a familiar pattern. For more than a century, the industry has sought to keep a narrow definition of black lung.

In the early 20th century, coal companies and sympathetic doctors argued that coal dust was harmless and actually protected miners’ lungs from tuberculosis.

Since then, scientific advances have shown that breathing coal dust can harm different people in different ways.

One miner might develop the black nodules characteristic of coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, the classic form of black lung. Another might find the air sacs in his lungs destroyed — emphysema — or the lining of his airways irritated and blocked — chronic bronchitis.

As the effects of coal dust have gained broader recognition, the industry in each instance eventually has had to accept the evidence. But, while these fights about classification have played out, sick miners have found it difficult, if not impossible, to win benefits.

Today, miners again are facing this strategy of denial and containment, this time over the pattern of scarring seen in the lungs of Latusek and hundreds of other miners with cases decided since 2000. In virtually all of the more than 380 cases identified by the Center, a doctor testifying for the coal company — or, in many cases, multiple doctors — blamed some variant of the disease idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, known as IPF, or a similar illness. This is the same scarring of unknown cause that Consol’s doctors say Latusek has.

Read the whole thing here.