James Muncy can trace his breathing problems back to the 1990s, when he was still mining coal. “I couldn’t cut grass hardly,” he says. “When it’s hot, [I] couldn’t breathe.”
In 2014, he was diagnosed with the advanced form of black lung disease, known as complicated black lung, or progressive massive fibrosis. “I know it’s going to kill me,” says Muncy, whose brother died of the disease in 2017. “I figured it was going to be a horrible death, and it probably will be.”
Over the past year, NPR and the PBS program Frontline have interviewed dozens of miners across Appalachia with black lung. The interviews with miners like Muncy were part of an investigation that found federal regulators, despite mounting evidence and a stream of dire warnings, failed to protect coal miners.
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