As more Wyoming coal miners suffer from the debilitating and deadly disease known as black lung, the Trump administration is dismantling the health system that tested for the disease and helped miners avoid getting sicker.

Twenty-five employees at the federal Coal Workers’ Health Surveillance Program (CWHSP) were put on administrative leave this month as part of the administration’s efforts to downsize the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The changes to the program, which falls under the Center for Disease Control’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), come as the number of coal miners in Wyoming drawing federal benefits for black lung grew to 52 in fiscal year 2024. That statistic was provided to Wyoming Public Radio (WPR) by officials in the U.S. Department of Labor in December 2024.

The reduction is also happening in tandem with Pres. Donald Trump’s efforts to reinvigorate the coal industry through executive actions.

Researchers, epidemiologists and physicians at the NIOSH respiratory unit typically analyze thousands of chest X-rays per year from miners across the country, including those in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin and Green River Basin coal mines. The unit also sent mobile X-ray units to mines to screen workers regularly.

The public data that researchers provided shows which parts of the country have higher rates of black lung, which has become resurgent as coal seams become thinner and more miners drill into sandstone. Drilling or blasting into that type of rock can kick up silica dust, which is about 20 times more toxic than coal dust. Silica is blamed for an epidemic of severe black lung in the U.S.

“The statistics were helpful for us when talking to miners, because there's sometimes when you're saying, ‘Oh, black lung is still around’,” said Sarah Salveson-Jones, the program director of the Northwest Community Action Programs (NOWCAP) Black Lung Clinic, which helps miners in parts of the Rocky Mountain region. “A lot of people think, ‘[black lung] was big in the 1950s. It's gone now.’ And it's not. And NIOSH statistics helped with that knowledge base.”

The abrupt end to the unit charged with gathering those statistics has troubled people like Richard Miller, a retired policy director for the U.S. House Committee on Education and Workforce. Miller worked on black lung issues during his time in Congress.

“This is ignorance on steroids,” said Miller. “What you have right now is the unraveling of the infrastructure of miner health protections.”

In Miller’s view, what’s problematic about the cuts to the unit is that its function, to oversee the health of the country’s miners, is congressionally mandated.

“These are mandatory programs, meaning the statute says NIOSH shall have a mining research program for mining safety and health,” he said. “NIOSH shall provide health screening through the 1969 Coal Act. So what you've got is a whole series of mandatory obligations that are written into law, not as a discretion, but as a mandate.”

Miller said that if the Trump administration wanted to eliminate the unit and other parts of coal worker research, it should go through Congress to repeal it. He added that a class-action lawsuit in West Virginia is already underway to reinstate the unit’s employees.

“This is really quite disturbing, because you're shredding what people shed blood for to get,” he said.

For one thing, X-rays that the unit reviews sometimes result in job transfers for miners to protect their health.

“The reason that you [order job transfers] is to slow the progression of disease,” said Scott Laney, a researcher at the NIOSH unit who was put on administrative leave until June 1. “The more exposure that you have, the more rapidly your disease will progress. So the basis of the program is to stop that from happening.”

But with the unit indefinitely suspended due to the reduction in workforce, those X-rays will go unexamined, and miners in Wyoming might continue to work in high-dust environments despite showing signs of illness, he said.

Another element of the unit’s work that both the public and journalists will miss is its data collection, Laney said. He noted that the unit allowed for public inquiries through what’s known as the coal workers’ health surveillance data query system, which he said has been pulled offline.

“As a citizen looking for public information, or as a journalist looking for public information, I think you'll probably be hard pressed to find hard numbers that are currently available,” Laney said.

Ordinarily, analysts at the unit would answer public messages from the query system to “pull the answers from today as to where we're at with black lung in Wyoming.”

“Those people have been fired, and so I can't get you that information, unfortunately, and it looks like I'm not going to be able to get you that information into the conceivable future,” he said.

Gov. Mark Gordon, a supporter of the coal industry in Wyoming along with renewable energy sources, attended Trump’s executive order signing in Washington, D.C. this month on coal extraction.

In an interview with WPR, he said the reductions to NIOSH and the CWHSP unit aren’t of concern due to the prevalence of surface mining in the state as opposed to underground mining.

“I do believe that [with the federal reductions], there's maybe a new equilibrium coming back,” said Gordon. “I think that equilibrium maybe has a bit less expense to it, but I'm hopeful that the baseline of the health of our workers is not impacted. But I do want to say for Wyoming, our coal miners, it's surface mining. It's a great wage, and I think we have the ability to be able to move forward on all fronts, including worker health.”

However, Miller said that coal miners working in surface mines can still get sick, and that all miners in the state should have access to the unit’s services. Multiple studies also show that surface miners are exposed to excessive amounts of coal and silica dust that cause black lung, and also suffer from black lung disease.

“The truth is, you have cases of black lung disease, and those miners should be no less deserving of it than those that are in Appalachia or southern Illinois or anywhere else, right?” he said. “I don't know why people in Wyoming should be less deserving of the protections and benefits. I guess the question I would ask the governor is, well, do you think that people in Wyoming should be exempted from being able to file benefits under the Black Lung Benefits Act?”

Also this month, the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration announced a four-month delay in enforcing strict new limits on coal miner exposure to silica dust.

This reporting was made possible by a grant from the Corporation For Public Broadcasting, supporting state government coverage in the state. Wyoming Public Media and Jackson Hole Community Radio are partnering to cover state issues both on air and online.