{
  "id": "1999-januaryfebruary-defied-laws-diseased-labor",
  "slug": "1999-januaryfebruary-defied-laws-diseased-labor",
  "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1999-januaryfebruary-defied-laws-diseased-labor.html",
  "year": 1999,
  "month": "January/February",
  "monthNum": 1,
  "headline": "Defied laws, diseased labor",
  "kicker": "BLACK-LUNG PERSISTENCE",
  "author_name": "Gardiner Harris",
  "author_title": "Reporter",
  "affiliation": "The Courier Journal",
  "summary": "An investigation into the coal mining industry's negligence of black lung disease laws, revealing routine defiance of mine dust level regulations.",
  "keywords": [
    "black lung",
    "coal mining",
    "negligence"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Health & Environment",
    "Investigative Methods",
    "Data & Databases"
  ],
  "technologies": [],
  "full_text": "Nearly three decades after Congress passed laws intended to end the disease, black lung still kills nearly 500 coal miners each year. The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Ky.) decided to determine why. After more than a year of work, we printed in April a series concluding that the deaths result because coal operators, aided by miners themselves, routinely defy federal laws designed to control mine dust levels. Industry representatives have fiercely denied our charges but have not explained why so many tests in the dustiest areas of mines have impossibly small amounts of dust in them - proof that the tests aren't being conducted properly. Nor have they explained why one-third of all underground mines annually flunk at least one dust test or why two-thirds of all mines are cited each year for improper dust controls. All of these conclusions came from the computer work. The computer and on-the-ground reporting set up a dialogue. As we learned something in the field, we'd figure out new questions to ask the data. The data would in turn focus our field research. I suppose we could have written something without all of the computer analysis, but I don't know what it would have amounted to. Eastern Kentucky's mines are almost entirely non-union and small operations. Figuring out how to get in touch with hundreds of miners was my first challenge. The state has at least two lists of miners; in May 1996 I asked for both. We started calling miners. I visited anyone who agreed to talk, though not for long. After a couple of weeks, I had spoken to less than a dozen miners. Since I had planned to talk to hundreds but had initially only been given five months to finish, something had to give. The next set of data that I requested was dust-test records from the federal government. We only asked for a few years' worth. This was a mistake. After playing around with the most recent data, I realized that the graph looked very odd. I asked for more years. Then I asked for databases that would tell me which mines were sending in which records. After a lengthy process, we realized a systemic problem with how the mining industry reported data, which became the centerpiece of our investigation.",
  "provenance": {
    "extracted_by": "pre-v2",
    "extracted_at": "",
    "verified": true
  },
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  "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1999-januaryfebruary-defied-laws-diseased-labor.html",
  "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1999-januaryfebruary-defied-laws-diseased-labor.json"
}