‘I want to live’: West Virginia miners say the stakes for them are life-and-death as Trump hollows out safety support. How POTUS’s pickaxe is hitting colliers where it hurts

Now federal cuts to safety programs raise the life-and-death stakes for miners like him even higher.

Black lung disease, a severe respiratory illness, is on the rise as miners work deeper than ever beneath the Earth’s surface. At such depths, they’re exposed to silica — a naturally occurring compound 20 times more toxic than regular coal dust.

While Trump has promised to get coal booming again in the U.S., he is cutting funding to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).

Since it was set up in 1970, this federal agency has enforced worker safety across the U.S., including maintaining health surveillance programs to monitor and protect miners from black lung disease and other job-related risks.

The Trump administration’s cuts have essentially shuttered the agency. As their layoffs loom in June, agency employees say that without adequate safety enforcement, there won’t be any people to extract coal. Miners agree.

"You don't take care of the miners, you ain't going to mine coal," said one. "The machine don't run by itself, you know what I'm saying?"

Federal safety workers and politicians rally to protect miners

About 800 NIOSH employees placed on leave have set up a “war room” in West Virginia to keep campaigning for mining safety until they are officially let go.

One of them, epidemiologist Dr. Scott Laney was blunt about the impact of gutting of the agency.

“It's going to lead to premature mortality and death in these miners,” he said. “There's just no getting around it."

Amanda Lawson, a West Virginia healthcare employee, is seeing the effects. Miners who come to her for care have “horrible” lung X-rays. She blames the Trump cuts, specifically the slashing of its right-to-transfer program, which shifts miners with high silica exposure to other locations.