JOHNSON CITY — Coal and rock dust have long been part of a miner’s life in central Appalachia, and medical and legal experts in the black lung field are bracing for an updated report on miners’ health across the nation.
Brad Johnson, black lung program director for Stone Mountain Health Services, said Wednesday that the National Coalition of Black Lung and Respiratory Disease Clinics at the Carnegie Hotel brings together experts, advocates and physicians together from the two main coal mining regions of the U.S. — the Arizona-New Mexico-Colorado-Utah region that includes mining on Navaho Reservation lands — and 11 states in the central Appalachia region including Southwest Virginia, Kentucky, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.