Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An Epidemic Is Killing Thousands of Coal Miners

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 70 posts

Re: An Epidemic Is Killing Thousands of Coal Miners

#31

Post by tCfD »

KirinDave wrote: post #5
kryogen1c wrote: post #2

I've started implementing a rule in my life: if the entire conversation is unsurprising and predictable, don't have it. NPR thinks stronger regulations could have raised health of workers? Color me not interested. A more honest headline I'd be interested in reading: negative health implications worth raising national cost of living for this industry

I've long had a rule in my life: "When someone can only accept a conversation or submit to an idea if it is framed in ways that specifically impact them, then they're most likely not in possession of any idea or perspective worth sharing in the first place." If you're angry that a publication addresses a human problem on a human level because, it seems, you're upset about what fractional cents of cost it would have a…

The misguided belief that "if it can't be counted, it doesn't count" lies at the heart of all structural social conflicts. When complex reality is overcompressed into digestible, uniform units of account, whatever values fall outside the perception model is discounted to zero and lost.

Re: An Epidemic Is Killing Thousands of Coal Miners

#32

Post by InclinedPlane »

matte_black wrote: post #20
gnu8 wrote: post #3

It's clear that no one should be working in a mine without at minimum an N95 mask and probably a PAPR (powered air purifying respirator). I wonder if there is any reason at all, other than preserving corporate profit margins, that the coal industry has failed to adopt simple and well understood industrial hygiene practices. Clean coal indeed.

Respirators aren't all that expensive, you can buy one at a hardware store. Why wouldn't miners just bring their own?

Do you own a respirator? Why not?

Re: An Epidemic Is Killing Thousands of Coal Miners

#33

Post by cc439 »

nradov wrote: post #28
matte_black wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respirators aren't all that expensive, you can buy one at a hardware store. Why wouldn't miners just bring their own?

Respirators are uncomfortable to wear. I know that might seem like silly reason considering the long term health consequences, but in industrial settings it's quite common for workers to ignore or disable any safety equipment that gets in their way.

You've just hit the nail on the head. PPE is an annoyance, especially in the form of devices that make critical bodily functions (like breathing and dissipating heat) difficult. Regulate all you want, workers will voluntarily remove the PPE often enough to incur respiratory damage just like they do with hearing protection in areas that aren't immediately deafeningly loud.

Re: An Epidemic Is Killing Thousands of Coal Miners

#34

Post by tlb »

munk-a wrote: post #16
fromthestart wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clean coal refers to scrubbing pollutants and possibly CO2 from emissions. It isn't necessarily bullshit.

Indeed, and to clarify "clean coal" isn't referring to cleaning the coal, it is referring to increased effort put into trying to reduce released pollutants when using the coal. There was a hilarious quote from a while back where a politician referred to train loads of "cleaned coal" heading out of Montana which created a misunderstanding about what clean coal technologies are trying to do. There is no "cleaned coal".…

Coal mines vary widely in the amount of impurities in the coal they produce. Low-impurity coal requires less scrubbing to meet a give emissions target. Sulfur is the worst of the impurities -- it becomes sulfuric acid in the atmosphere and is precipitated by rain, causing concrete to erode.

The cleaner coal is called Anthracite [0]. The dirtier coal is Lignite [1]. Lignite is usually cleaned, by heating it up to drive out the water so it burns better (and weighs less during shipping.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthracite [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lignite

Re: An Epidemic Is Killing Thousands of Coal Miners

#35

Post by NeedMoreTea »

mindslight wrote: post #27
Gibbon1 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we've forgotten that regulations on industry is not a market distortion but a market correction (when done correctly). My argument is we've replaced a rich set of social controls with a single unitary one; money. And then wonder why we're constantly dealing with mal-externalities. If you consider that human societies are complex and industrial ones even more so, the idea that you can manage that with a single contr…

Erm, the entire point of a simple metric (money) is so that complex processes don't have to be understood top-down to be managed. From first principles, the more technologically complex a society gets, the more you would expect its priorities to be weighed with money. Now please, don't take this as an endorsement that we should let externalities go unchecked, or even that governance should shirk basic understanding o…

I can't think of a single instance, from the last 200 years, where money alone has achieved the appropriate constraint of a process, product or industry.

All the significant milestones in health and safety have been from hard won regulation and money - not just taxation, but penalties and fines. Usually accompanied by enormous effort and spending from industry to lie, cheat and avoid said regulation being enacted, or having to comply with it once enacted.

Business has become ever more multi-national, taxation is gamed across nations, trade deals have placed commerce above government, and regulation is becoming ever less fashionable. Industry now feels ever more able to simply move things out of sight, overseas to developing nations sub contracted to members of their supply chain. All health, safety and environmental issues can be dealt with via a simple press release expressing disappointment, but they are, after all an "independent" supplier.

I'd say the last two centuries have proved that trend entirely inappropriate for everything except corporate profit.

Re: An Epidemic Is Killing Thousands of Coal Miners

#36

Post by test6554 »

gnu8 wrote: post #3

It's clear that no one should be working in a mine without at minimum an N95 mask and probably a PAPR (powered air purifying respirator). I wonder if there is any reason at all, other than preserving corporate profit margins, that the coal industry has failed to adopt simple and well understood industrial hygiene practices. Clean coal indeed.

The ironic thing is that this illness is due to non-coal dust (silicates) in the air which are much finer than coal dust. And because they are non-coal dust, they escaped regulation for a long time.

Re: An Epidemic Is Killing Thousands of Coal Miners

#37

Post by syntaxing »

It's disgusting how coal mine owners doesn't even want to admit that it's a problem. It's only a "potential" problem and the science isn't conclusive. What a load of shit. Silicosis is a well studied health hazard. What do you expect when you mine the earth and silica is everywhere in the ground?

Re: An Epidemic Is Killing Thousands of Coal Miners

#38

Post by stdplaceholder »

fromthestart wrote: post #12
maxxxxx wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Clean coal" was always a bullshit term like "light cigarettes". It was just a way to delay any real action.

Clean coal refers to scrubbing pollutants and possibly CO2 from emissions. It isn't necessarily bullshit.

There is no thermodynamically possible way to generate power from burning coal while also removing the primary product of the reaction from the effluent. Clean coal is, necessarily, 100% bullshit.

Re: An Epidemic Is Killing Thousands of Coal Miners

#39

Post by matte_black »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #32
matte_black wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respirators aren't all that expensive, you can buy one at a hardware store. Why wouldn't miners just bring their own?

Do you own a respirator? Why not?

I actually do, for wood working. Won't be breathing in all that sawdust.

Re: An Epidemic Is Killing Thousands of Coal Miners

#40

Post by matte_black »

nradov wrote: post #28
matte_black wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respirators aren't all that expensive, you can buy one at a hardware store. Why wouldn't miners just bring their own?

Respirators are uncomfortable to wear. I know that might seem like silly reason considering the long term health consequences, but in industrial settings it's quite common for workers to ignore or disable any safety equipment that gets in their way.

Not really sure what the solution is then. And it's easy to see why companies wouldn't bothering doing much about it.
Post reply on HN