Black lung disease was never wiped out
Black lung disease was never eradicated in Australia, the Queensland government has admitted.
Black lung disease was never eradicated in Australia, the Queensland government has admitted on the eve of a Senate inquiry during which executives from some of the world’s biggest miners will testify.
Queensland Mines Minister Anthony Lynham, who said in December that the disease had resurfaced in Australia “three decades” after it was supposedly eradicated, told The Australian: “Clearly, the six cases to date show that coal workers’ pneumoconiosis was not eradicated.”
Responding to the mining union’s claim “multiple systemic failures” created the “ill-founded assumption” that Australia was free of the disease, Dr Lynham said: “I cannot speak for the past. My focus is on the current situation and ensuring safe and healthy conditions, and an effective screening program for the current workforce … I expect more cases to be confirmed.”
A Senate inquiry into the disease begins in Brisbane today, with representatives of Brazilian mining giant Vale, which owns Carborough Downs in the Bowen Basin, and Anglo American, which owns Grasstree mine in north Queensland, scheduled to appear.
Vale Australia’s general manager, Andrew Vella, and Anglo American Coal’s head of safety, Mike Oswell, are expected to testify, along with medical specialists from the companies and former coalminers, including two who have the disease.
The committee is investigating “issues around the detection of the illness and treatment for sufferers” amid concerns there has been a systemic failure in screening for the disease.
Robert Cohen, of the University of Chicago, who will also testify, told The Australian there should be a federal system for regulating the health of miners.
“It’s interesting that this is ... managed from state to state with different standards for dust control. There might be a role for the federal government to standardise it nationally,” Professor Cohen said. “The discovery of those cases was a wake-up call.”
Professor Cohen, who is also consulting on a Monash University review commissioned by the Queensland government, said that in the US “there’s one federal standard, one surveillance program offered to all miners ... a national agency”.
Six cases of the disease have been confirmed in the past three months. The mining union claims that a further 1000 could emerge. Black lung disease is incurable, but can be controlled, primarily by minimising exposure to coal dust.