‘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

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.

"There's nobody to send them to get them some protection and get them moved out of the dust," Lawson told ABC.

While Trump’s supporters on Capitol Hill have celebrated his efforts to cut government spending, some say he’s going too far, criticizing him and Robert F. Kennedy, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, for slashing mining protections.

In April, West Virginia Senate Republican Shelley Moore Capito wrote a letter to Kennedy arguing that while she supported Trump’s efforts to ‘right-size government’ she did not feel the NIOSH coal programs and research should be cut as they are unique.

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How can miners protect themselves?

Unions like the United Mine Workers of America and community-based health monitoring programs might have to step up to monitor X-ray scans and correctly enforce PPE standards.

Moreover, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration protections are still in place. Miners should aggressively report any unsafe working conditions — for their own sakes and their families.

“I got a wife and two kids and two grandbabies, you know, and I want to live,” Robinson said.