American Experience | The Mine Wars PBS | Documentary 2017

Really tough way to make a living. Have to admire the shear guts of the men that go down in those mines every day in order to support their families.

When you have no other recourse to support yourself and your family; you are faced with tough choices. I did some work in the late 1990's when I was a Systems Engineer at the U.S. Army Telemedicine Advance Technology Research Center at Ft. Detrick, MD in partnership between the University if West Virginia Medical School and the Army to explore the use of remote monitoring systems to treat home bound patients diagnosed with Black-lung disease. The X-rays, the patients themselves as well as the low prognosis for any meaningful life were heartbreaking. You can be a Democrat or Republican, pro or anti union - but the reality is that these men live in shadow world where they are unable to breathe normally or perform the simplest tasks. Mine safety is the only real preventative measure because their is no cure for Black-lung.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/07/01/535082619/npr-continues-to-find-hundreds-of-cases-of-advanced-black-lung