On Fri, 18 Sep 2015 12:25:31 -0400, Keyser Söze
wrote:

I spent some time in the "confluence" of West Virginia, Ohio, and
Kentucky when I worked for The Associated Press. Once week, I was
covering a conference on Black Lung disease, and I recall several public
officials from Kentucky asserting there was no connection between the
coal dust the miners were ingesting and the disease.

Coal and moonshine is pretty much all they had to make a living in
that area and even the miners were in denial about whether would kill
them.
One of my friends in the 50s was from coal people but his dad broke
loose and moved to DC to be a pressman for the Washington Post.
He said he thought the ink might kill him but it wasn't as bad as coal
dust. His family pretty much disowned him.

When they were building the DC Metro we had lots of coal miners who
moved there to blast subway tunnels. My nieces family was in the heavy
equipment business and they worked there too. I had a drink or 6 with
lots of those miners. Even in the 70s, they still ware not sure coal
was THAT deadly, in spite of the fact that everyone they knew had some
kind of problem from it..

Amazing how you can put on ther blinders when your livelihood is on
the line.