Dirty Work (page 2 of 3)

Black Lung Disease

McKnight, 51, a utility man at Harris No. 1, began working underground in 1976. A fourth-generation miner, he has experienced the death of a friend, his own hour-long burial in rubble, and subterranean geological wonders most of us will never see. Once he found hanging overhead an entire petrified tree that predated the dinosaurs. "It was the prettiest thing I've ever seen in my life," he says.

When nine Pennsylvania coal miners were trapped underground in 2002, Anita Cecil, a single mother of a 12-year-old, sat glued to the television, praying for their safety. Four years later, she became a miner herself, following in the footsteps of her father, who worked the mines for 33 years. Today a sticker on the back of her truck reads "Chicks Dig It Too."

Says Cecil, 31, "There's something different about coal miners. There's a trust you don't get with any other group of people." She swears the men at her mine have been completely accepting of a woman in their midst.

Miners start at about $20 per hour, a wage nearly impossible to get elsewhere in rural southern West Virginia. Cecil's job has allowed her to remodel her home and add a basketball court for her son, Christopher.

Though her income doesn't depend on how much coal she produces -- the old "root hog or die" practice -- the business today is a 24/7 proposition. Like many new miners, Cecil got stuck working the second shift -- the hours her son wasn't in school -- when she first started. Still, she's grateful for the pay, which she hopes will help send her boy to college.

On his day off, Clyde McKnight sits on a recliner in the trailer he shares with his wife, Cheryl, talking on the phone with their son, Clyde III. The 25-year-old has done four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and was recently working as a prison guard in West Virginia. Married with a one-year-old son, he has now decided to reenlist with the Marines as a sergeant for four more years.

The news -- that in all likelihood their son is headed back into harm's way for the fifth time in six years -- does not resonate as one might imagine. Truth is, Cheryl says, she would rather he be fighting in foreign wars than going underground every day.

"A lot of the good, big coal is gone," her husband explains. "Now you have to go deeper into the mines. Once you get below creek level, gas builds up and can become explosive. You don't want to think of your kids working in those conditions. Plus, there's the long-term stuff to worry about."

The "long-term stuff" is black lung disease. Miners who breathe coal dust for decades often end up with the disabling and deadly condition. Federal legislation passed in 1969 established a fund to compensate miners with black lung, but only about 13 percent of claims result in payment -- even for McKnight, who had part of a lung removed seven years ago. Respirators and dust-control measures have improved things, but McKnight doesn't believe the risk is gone. "If you come home after a ten-hour shift with coal dust in your nostrils," he says, "you've got coal dust in your lungs too."

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