Mark McCowan, 47, was diagnosed with the worst stage of black lung only five years after an X-ray showed he had no sign of the disease.
Credit Jack Corn / US National Archives
Men wait for the Beckley Black Lung Association meeting to begin. A fight for safer regulations dramatically decreased the hazards of mining.
Credit Jack Corn / US National Archives
Miners who were turned away by other doctors often went to Donald Rasmussen, a pulmonologist, to learn whether they might have the disease.
Credit Jack Corn / US National Archives
Miners waiting for their examination. After years of decline in black lung there has been a sudden surge in diagnosis, especially among younger miners.
Credit Jack Corn / US National Archives
East Gulf, one of the largest mining companies in the area of Rhodell and Beckley, W.Va., in 1974.
Credit Jack Corn / US National Archives
Miners undergo tests in the black lung laboratory at the Appalachian Regional Hospital.
Credit David Deal for NPR
Coal miners are tested for black lung at a clinic in West Virginia.
Credit Jack Corn / US National Archives
A miner at the black lung laboratory in the Appalachian Regional Hospital in Beckley, W.Va., has his lung capacity tested. Blood samples were also taken and his heartbeat was monitored while walking on a treadmill. These and other tests were used to determine if miners had coal dust particles in their lungs.
Credit David Deal for NPR
Patty and Gary Quarles lost their son, Gary Wayne Quarles, in the explosion at Upper Big Branch mine. Their son's post-mortem diagnosis indicated he had black lung, a puzzling finding since he was only 33.
Credit David Deal for NPR
Donald Rasmussen, 84, is a pulmonologist in Beckley, W.Va. He figures he's tested 40,000 coal miners in the last 50 years.
It wasn't supposed to happen to coal miners in Mark McCowan's generation. It wasn't supposed to strike so early and so hard. At age 47 and just seven years after his first diagnosis, McCowan shouldn't have a chest X-ray that looks this bad.
"I'm seeing more definition in the mass," McCowan says, pausing for deep breaths as he holds the X-ray film up to the light of his living room window in Pounding Mill, Va.
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