FOR the 3,000 coal miners who assembled last week in Charleston, W. Va., it was an occasion for passing collection plates, singing protest songs and heaping scorn on mine operators. The miners, some of whom wore black arm bands inscribed with skull and crossbones, were demonstrating for protection against "black lung," a disease caused by inhaling coal dust that can lead to illness or death. A form of pneumoconiosis estimated to affect three-fourths of the nation's 135,000 coal workers, black lung has become an increasingly serious problem because modern power-operated mining machines churn up far more dust than old-fashioned picks and shovels. Says one United Mineworkers official: "It used to take a lifetime to get black lung. Now it takes only a few years. That's progress."
Public Apathy. Coal mining is by far the most hazardous occupation in the U.S., having killed one out of every 550 miners in 1968 alone. Lumbering, shipping and stevedoring, construction and quarrying also produce a disproportionate share of industrial deaths and injuries. The overall safety record of U.S. industry is far better than that of mining. Yet on-the-job accidents last year killed 14,000 and disabled 2,200,000 of the nation's 82 million workers. Another 5,000,000 suffered lesser work injuries or illnesses. Beyond the incalculable toll they took in pain and suffering, job-related accidents and ailments cost workers $1.5 billion in lost wages and deprived industry of $5 billion in production, an amount larger than the annual output of all but the eight biggest U.S. manufacturers.
That record is certainly an improvement over 50 years ago, when industrial accidents killed nearly twice as many people in a work force half the size of today's. Still, the push for occupational safety appears to have weakened in recent years. The number of deaths has stayed nearly the same since 1963, while disabling injuries have actually been on the increase. A number of other industrial nations pay more attention to safety and have better records to show for it. British fatalities in manufacturing run only half as high per man-hour as those in the U.S. In construction, the U.S. death rate is 30 times that in Belgium and The Netherlands, 50 times that in Poland. Japan, undergoing breakneck economic expansion, has adopted a comprehensive set of job-safety regulations, which are enforced by 2,000 government inspectors. As a result, industrial fatalities have declined by 11% in two years.
The U.S. has marshaled no such effort, in part because of public apathy. Indeed, it usually takes a disaster of the magnitude of last November's underground explosion near Farmington, W. Va., which resulted in the deaths of 78 coal miners, to attract serious attention to the problem of job safety at all. The great majority of on-the-job casualties occur in mundane fashion; and they usually happen one at a time.