Lung Disease Is No Minor Problem
Written by Aditi Mahajan
Edited by Madeleine Lu
Jan 31, 2021
What if the simple act of going to work increased your chances of getting a life threatening disease? Imagine being forced to breathe in dangerous fine particles everyday in your place of work. This is the shocking reality for many American workers today, especially those in the mining industry. Miners work in environments that put their lungs at risk. Cases of work related lung disease have been increasing this past decade and show no signs of slowing down.
People with lung disease can experience a difficult time breathing, a persistent cough, and a tightness in their chests. These symptoms can turn fatal. Many work-related lung disease patients turn to lung replacements from donors, but donor lungs are a limited and expensive resource. A single lung transplant can cost upwards of a million dollars! This financial pressure is especially hard on insurance companies that tend to cover the majority of the costs of the lung transplant procedure.
The main lung diseases that are plaguing the worker population are pneumoconiosis, silicosis and asbestosis. Inhaling small particles over a long period of time causes these diseases. The most common and dangerous of these diseases is pneumoconiosis, also known as black lung disease. The number of recent cases of this disease has reached an extraordinarily high level. This disease caused by breathing in coal particles in mines, stains lungs black.
The majority of the people who contract work related lung diseases are older adults between the ages of fifty and sixty. Those who have chronic lung diseases typically have much shorter life spans. The average person who has contracted silicosis at work, for example, typically only lives eight more years after contracting the disease! Many of the lung diseases that coal miners get at work are neither reversible nor curable once they are acquired. However, there is hope! Work related lung diseases are different from genetic lung diseases, as they are completely preventable.
Preventing work related lung diseases would save insurance companies a lot of money and would help save many lives. Improving medical monitoring and establishing stricter controls for fine particulate matter in risky work environments is the best way to prevent this problem. People should not have to worry about their lung health at work.
Works Cited
Crist, Carolyn. “US Lung Transplants for Work-Related Lung Diseases Are Increasing.” Medscape, Medscape, 14 Oct. 2020.
<www.medscape.com/viewarticle/938930>