This is a recording of Appalachian historian Barbara Ellen Smith's 1981 article, "Black Lung: The Social Production of Disease." It describes the history of black lung as a medical diagnosis and an occupational disease, and places decades of medical denial and dismissal of black lung in the context of the labor and class relations of twentieth-century West Virginian coal camps. Smith's account ends with the successful worker-led effort to create a federal black lung benefits program, and contends that these efforts hinged in part on a radical redefinition of the disease itself. Read the full article online (jstor; drive).
Although it seems difficult to imagine now, for decades, coal miners who complained of respiratory problems after years of unsafe exposure to coal and rock dust were diagnosed with 'fear of the mines' or accused of malingering. Black lung was comparatively difficult to diagnose from an X-ray, and nearly all medical care available in the coalfields was provided by company doctors, who were incentivized to ignore or downplay the clear hazards of the mines. Only aggressive labor action, including a period of repeated UMW strikes during World War II, ended this approach to coal-related dust disease. The black lung movement offers valuable insight into how workers have responded to insidious workplace safety issues, a topic with obvious present force.
