You Can Always Depend on Foxx To Make the Burden Heavier

I had not focused enough on what happens when the coal seam runs thin:

As Appalachian coal deposits have dwindled over recent decades, miners have had to cut through more and more sandstone rock. This has exposed miners to very high levels of respirable silica dust and caused rates of black lung to rise to epidemic levels, with younger miners being particularly afflicted.

With that fact as background, the following fact looks just plain gross and cruel -- cruel for no good reason, except what you might milk from the mining industry because you're a member of the ruling party in Congress. 

On July 29, Congresswoman Virginia Foxx of North Carolina joined six other Republican members of Congress in sending a letter to the Mine Safety & Health Administration (MSHA), asking the agency to develop a new, more industry-friendly rule about acceptable levels of silica dust, and describing the agency’s efforts to curb silica exposure as placing “undue and excessive burdens” and “unwarranted and costly obligations” on mining companies. 

According to AppVoices, "The letter does not acknowledge the epidemic level of black lung in Central Appalachia, or the fact that the disease is affecting younger miners than in previous generations." Because those things, like many other species of human suffering, are of little interest to the congresswoman from the Fifth District of North Carolina.