Coal Miner’s Daughter Fights Back After DOGE Cuts Jobs of Health Researchers

Over the last five decades, more than 75,000 miners have died of black lung disease. To catch that disease and other health problems early, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has screened miners at their mines, conducted research to track the diseases, and developed new tools to prevent diseases in the first place.

That didn’t stop DOGE from laying off about 90% of NIOSH’s staff, placing many of them on administrative leave. 

Due to a lawsuit brought by a coal miner against the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIOSH, the mobile clinic workers and other staffers are back at work. Yet other institute researchers working to prevent mining-related lung diseases heard nothing.

Now, Anita Wolfe, who once ran a mobile clinic for NIOSH and whose father started worked as a coal miner when he was around 12 and died of causes related to black lung and silicosis, two pulmonary diseases related to dust in mines, is leading the fight to recover those jobs and protect miners’ health.

“It comes down to how much is a life worth,” Wolfe told Capital & Main’s Meg Duff. “You want more coal, but you don’t care about the coal miners and what’s happening to them.”