‘Do you have to be dead?’: US coalminers plead for benefits as black-lung disease cases surge

Trump says he digs coal – but pneumoconiosis cases are at a 50-year high, and sick miners are mired in benefit delays

For 38 years, Josh Armes worked as a coal miner in West Virginia and Virginia.

After retirement, Armes, 74, of Grundy, Virginia, was diagnosed with black lung disease, medically known as coal workers’ pneumoconiosis (CWP), caused by breathing in coal dust over long periods, which irreversibly damages the lungs.

Armes has required an oxygen tank to breathe for the past four years or so, along with regular doctor visits and an albuterol inhaler to help when he has trouble breathing. Even with the supplemental oxygen, he’s severely limited in what he can physically do.

In 2014, Armes received notice that the federal black lung benefits he had been receiving for more than three years were being appealed against by a coal operator. For the last 12 years, he and his family have been in an appeals process limbo, trying to regain their benefits while Armes’s condition progresses.