coal mine dust lung disease

Labor Secretary Tom Perez announced yesterday a new regulation designed to reduce coal miners’ risk of developing coal mine dust lung disease (CMDLD).  I’ve written about these regulations many times, on both the need for them and the snail’s pace at which the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) reviewed them. They are long overdue.  Depending on who you ask these new regulations have been in the works since 2009 (beginning of the Obama Administration), 1996 (following an advisory committee report and NIOSH recommendation) or as far back as 1991 (following a…