Black lung: Miners shafted by fatal mistakes

EVERY night Sue Byron takes two extra doonas and two hot water bottles to bed. If she’s lucky, the water will go cold before she wakes up, meaning her husband has slept without contracting pneumonia.

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EVERY night, even in the middle of summer, Sue Byron prepares two spare doonas and two hot water bottles in her Mackay home. Then she boils a jug of water and gets in bed.

If she’s lucky, the water will go cold before she wakes up, meaning that her husband, Chris Byron, 69, a former coal miner who was diagnosed with black lung disease late last year, has slept through the night without contracting another bout of pneumonia.

In the past decade, Chris, who spent nearly 45 years of his life digging coal out of the ground in NSW and Queensland, has suffered pneumonia more than 50 times.

It’s just one of myriad health issues, including chronic bronchitis and coughing blood and coal dust, that have steadily sapped strength from his body as black lung, which is also called Coal Workers’ Pneumoconiosis (CWP), has taken hold.

Chris and Sue Byron.

He is one of 20 Queensland coal miners to be diagnosed with the disease since 2015. They were the first cases in Queensland since the 1980s. Until the cases became publicised, everyone from the government to miners believed the disease had been eradicated.

Last month, Queensland Parliament’s Coal Workers’ Pneumoconiosis Select Committee held its 42nd hearing since September last year.

In sometimes teary testimony, Sue told the inquiry that the heartache of searching for answers to Chris’s worsening condition had taken a huge toll on them.

“Each week we notice that Chris is getting worse,” she said.

“He is 70 in November and I just have to keep him well. I have to get him to old age. I have to. He is the love of my life. I have to keep him as well as I possibly can. In our house I have become absolutely germophobic, petrified of germs.

“Everything is Dettolled just so he will not get a germ. We do not like going out anywhere because he might get a germ. He might start bleeding or he might get a cold or he might get pneumonia again.

There have been 20 Queensland coal miners diagnosed with black lung since 2015.

“Unless you saw it, you could not understand how bad it is. It is terrible.”

Anxiety about his condition is a constant shadow, dictating her nightly routine and leaving her on constant alert for signs of pneumonia.

“It starts in the early hours of the morning,” she said. “He wakes up shaking. He has what they call rigors. He is cold and shaking and shivering but it is a fever.

“The only way I can fix that is to have two doonas on the ready and two hot water bottles on the ready.”

After putting the extra doonas on the bed, Mrs Byron lies on top of the doonas, “crunching it all in”.

“I go out when the little buzzer goes off and fill up the water bottles. I put one down near his feet and he hangs on to the other one. We could be like that for an hour until he stops shaking. Then the blood starts.”

She then gets medication from the cabinet and the two wait out the lonely hours until the sun rises and they can visit his doctor for a diagnosis.

Committee chairwoman Jo-Ann Miller, the Member for Bundamba. speaks in Parliament about her family and black lung disease. Picture: Marc Robertson

Hours after she was brought to tears by Sue Byron’s testimony, committee chairwoman Jo-Ann Miller, the Member for Bundamba, delivered the inquiry’s interim report to State Parliament.

“This report exemplifies the human tragedy when public administration in Queensland is corrupted by illusion and false beliefs that black lung was eradicated in this state, and by the deliberate underfunding and under-resourcing over more than 30 years,” she said.

Since September, the committee has toured Queensland, listening to government departments and agencies, medical specialists, occupational safety and health professionals, unions, academics, mining engineers, mine operators and miners.

It has held 27 public and 15 private hearings, heard evidence from 190 witnesses and obtained more than 10,000 documents under summons.

It has found that everyone involved in the industry had “laboured under the illusion that CWP had been eradicated”.

The committee has been told that there are currently 28 extra claims with workers compensation insurers for CWP and more in relation to other respiratory conditions.

“During this period, those tasked with monitoring the health of Queensland coal workers were not actively looking for the disease, and in many cases were insufficiently informed and ill-equipped to enable its diagnosis,” the report says.

The committee has been told that there are currently 28 extra claims with workers compensation insurers for CWP and more in relation to other respiratory conditions.

“The committee considers that the overwhelming weight of evidence gathered to date suggests it is likely that many more Queensland miners and former miners will be diagnosed with CWP or related (diseases) as a result of what has been a catastrophic failure of the regulatory and health surveillance systems intended to ensure the protection of coal industry workers,” the report says.

Paul Harrison, who was the department’s chief mine safety and health officer until last July, told the inquiry that, during his 30 years in the industry, it was much more concerned with safety than health.

“It was true to say that fires and explosions and the prevention thereof have been the main focus,” he said.

He said this was a reaction to a series of major mine disasters at Moura, near Rockhampton in central Queensland.

Explosions at coal mines there in 1975, 1986 and 1994 had killed 13, 12 and 11 miners respectively.

The committee found the department’s focus on safety meant it “did not in any systemic and co-ordinated manner, monitor the activities of mine operators in relation to respirable dust”.

“Their focus was primarily on other mine hazards, with limited regard given to the dangers of respirable dust prior to the re-identification of CWP,” the report says.

The full report is due on May 29 and is expected to make recommendations for significant changes to how the state’s coal mining industry is administered.

Email Michael Wray