[NIOSH] still faces challenges in fully supporting screening efforts — contracting for chest X-rays, promoting events, and ensuring consistent funding.
“The main thing that I took away from the certification yesterday was that they have not fully restored these programs,” attorney Sam Petsonk said on “Talk of the Town” on WAJR Radio.
“They say they’re trying. They they say that they understand the court has ordered them to do this, but they have not restored the X-ray reading programs, the mobile unit that travels around the coal mines.”
A Kanawha County coal miner named Harry Wiley filed federal suit on April 7 on behalf of himself and others potentially affected by the loss of the Coal Workers Health Surveillance Program. Wiley is represented by attorneys including Petsonk.
The lawsuit noted that the federal mine safety statutes since 1969 have afforded American coal miners a medical screening and epidemiological surveillance program, along with a unique right to transfer to a non-dusty job if they begin developing early signs of occupational lung disease.
U.S. District Judge Irene Berger last month granted a preliminary injunction to reverse the federally ordered job cuts endangering black lung screening.
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