The benefit payments miners sick with black lung disease receive are not keeping pace with the cost of living, a new analysis showed.

Current monthly benefits for a miner and one dependent in 2024 are around $1,100, more than $3,000 lower than the average cost of living for a two-person household.

Quenton King, federal legislative specialist for Appalachian Voices, said lagging benefits are especially troubling when miners are increasingly developing black lung at younger ages, largely due to exposure to toxic silica dust.

"Younger miners are getting diagnosed with stage-three black lung, and they're having to quit mining in their 30s or 40s," King observed. "They're losing possibly 20 years, 30 years of work history, and they're unable to draw down that retirement fund."

Around 16% of the nation's coal workers are living with black lung, and after decades of improvement, the number of cases is on the rise again, according to the American Lung Association.

One National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health study found modern coal miners, particularly those in Central Appalachia, are more likely than their predecessors to die from coal worker's pneumoconiosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer.

King pointed out although the coal industry in on the decline, thousands of coal miners and their families living in Appalachian communities are affected daily by the disease.

"Something I hear from people in the Black Lung Association, one of the heartbreaking things for me is that they're not able to play with their grandchildren, because they are on oxygen tanks," King noted.

Appalachian advocacy groups sent a letter to Congress asking for budget legislation prioritizing investments in curbing black lung and supporting miners already living with the disease. Proposed federal legislation, known as the Black Lung Benefits Improvement Act, would tie benefit levels to cost-of-living adjustments, rather than the federal pay scale.


get more stories like this via email

Livestock being raised with antibiotics is on the rise in Iowa, the nation's number one hog producer.

Doctors say the trend increases the risk of antibiotic-resistant infections for people who consume drug-treated meat.

Scientists have described drug-resistant infections as a growing crisis. The National Institutes of Health say the drugs are overused.

The Food Animal Concerns Trust's Safe and Healthy Food Program Director and Senior Analyst, Steven Roach, said federal data show sales for antibiotics used in cattle and other animals is as high as it's been in nearly a decade.

That's especially important in Iowa.

"In pigs in the U.S. - it's up by 24%, and in cattle it's up by 10%," said Roach. "The chicken industry has continued to reduce their use, so it's possible for the animal ag industry to make changes - but we haven't seen that happen in cattle and pigs."

Data for 2024 show the use of antibiotics in chickens dropped by 50% over the last 7 years.

In Iowa, livestock, including hogs, are mostly raised in large corporate confinements - which are known to pollute the air and nearby ground and surface water.

Confinement operators say they are trying to keep up with consumer demand for a high-quality, consistent source of meat.

Roach said most of the meat available at grocery stores has been raised in confinements and treated with antibiotics.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates antibiotic-resistant infections kill at least 35,000 Americans every year.

Roach said large-scale ag producers could help reduce that number by changing their philosophy of routinely using drugs in their operations.

"We know we're raising animals in unhealthy conditions," said Roach, "so then we're going to give them antibiotics independent of whether they've been diagnosed with an illness."

Roach said meat in the grocery store that has been raised without antibiotics is identified as such on the packaging.




get more stories like this via email

Low-income Latino communities often bear the brunt of wildfires, so the Hispanic Access Foundation offers a wildfire management toolkit and video series to help families and policymakers prepare.

So far this year, more than 1 million acres have burned in wildland fires in California, more than three times what was lost in 2023.

Hilda Berganza, climate manager for the Hispanic Access Foundation, said Latinos who work outside in agriculture or construction are at high risk from the smoke.

"When there's a wildfire near, they don't stop working, either because they're not allowed to or because they don't know," Berganza explained. "Lung cancer, asthma rates are going up. There are now links to neurological disease and cardiovascular diseases, all from the wildfire smoke and different air pollutants."

Latinos are also less likely than their white neighbors to have home or renter's insurance, so losses hit harder. They are less likely to have a car to make a quick escape, and may not be able to afford a hotel in case of an evacuation.

Berganza argued agencies should partner with trusted local community groups and Spanish-language radio stations to make sure the language barrier does not delay crucial information.

"The Red Cross has an application on the phones where they're sending out alerts," Berganza observed. "While that is a good thing to use technology, a lot of Latinos actually don't have access to internet and or don't have smartphones because they're more expensive."

The toolkit's authors encouraged lawmakers to fully fund programs to allow low-income communities to reduce wildfire risk and programs to help families recover after a natural disaster.

By Grace Hussain for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Shanteya Hudson for Georgia News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

In April 2019, Chris Eubanks, head of the animal rights group Apex Advocacy, chanted along with a group of other activists in front of the city government building in Lithonia, Georgia. The local activists had been campaigning to shut down Bradford’s Livestock — a backyard slaughterhouse operated in the center of their small, predominantly Black community — since 2014. Eubanks joined in 2021, lending Apex’s resources and giving the campaign a highly needed energy boost. Right down the street from the public school and around the block from a church, the facility killed roughly 100 animals every month.

Though local to the area, Eubanks had been completely unaware of the campaign. “I’ve been doing this for years,” he tells Sentient. Yet the presence of the backyard slaughterhouse in the small Atlanta suburb caught even Eubanks by surprise. “I didn’t realize that there was a slaughterhouse five minutes from where I live[d].”

Late last year, the coalition finally accomplished their goal, thanks in part to Apex Advocacy. For Eubanks, his prior lack of awareness that there was a slaughterhouse in his backyard is indicative of a larger issue within the animal rights movement: not paying close enough attention to Black and Brown communities, and the issues they face.

By the time Eubanks entered the picture, community activists like Jan Costello had already been campaigning for years. In addition to her activism, Costello was working with the community development corporation at the time, encouraging new businesses to move to the area. Despite activists’ dedication, they struggled to overcome the numerous roadblocks they faced, largely due to a lack of time and resources to dedicate toward their campaign — the two things Apex Advocacy was poised to provide.

Grassroots Activists Working in Tandem With Community Members

In the years before Eubanks got involved, local activists attended council meetings, maintained an email list of more than 1,000 community members, kept meticulous records of exactly what the facility was doing and spoke to neighbors about the slaughterhouse operating in their backyards, says Costello. Their tactics relied heavily on the fact that the slaughterhouse was violating zoning laws by being located in a residential neighborhood.

Their efforts helped get the facility slapped with a cease and desist order from the county’s Department of Planning in 2019, but because the facility had a license from the state’s Department of Agriculture, it continued to operate, killing thousands more animals.

Problematic Optics

When Eubanks saw coverage of the situation on a local news channel, he knew he had to help. The news segment made it look like locals were “trying to take advantage of a small, Black business owner,” says Eubanks, and there was much more going on. “The news coverage didn’t help as much as the advocates in the community thought it would.”

What it did do was grab Eubanks’ attention, leading him to reach out to Costello.

“He brought in so much energy and advocacy at a point when we were just basically doing the same old thing,” Costello says. By leveraging Apex Advocacy’s network, the activists were able to flood officials’ emails with thousands of messages. “Although we got support from the outside, the foundation was community-based,” says Eubanks.

Focusing on Zoning Violations, Not Animal Rights

Despite most of the core group of advocates being animal rights activists, “we were just focusing on the zoning aspect of the law,” says Costello. “We were very careful not to turn this into an argument about the slaughtering of animals for consumption,” she continues, “because that wasn’t the law. [Bradford] could do that business, but just not there in the neighborhood.”

The major roadblock to their success came via the very legal system they relied upon to shutter the slaughterhouse due to zoning violations. Part of the problem was that the state issued the facility a license to operate as a custom exempt processing facility — meaning they couldn’t sell meat. “The slaughterhouse owner was able to use the loophole that he wasn’t selling meat, but selling the service of killing animals,” says Eubanks.

As critics pointed out, the facility was in fact offering entire animals for sale via Facebook. While the license didn’t remedy the local zoning problem, it did lend some legitimacy to the slaughterhouse’s operations — a fact the facility took full advantage of.

In response to the 2019 cease and desist order from the county, Bradford’s Livestock sued in 2020, arguing they had the right to use the land the way they saw fit. The legal team did their best to drag the case out as long as possible by repeatedly filing for extensions — an effort made easier by COVID. Dekalb county filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in June 2020.

While the case was decided, the slaughterhouse continued to operate, killing thousands more animals, according to the activists’ records. “When you’re trying to advocate for something that’s right, and it takes that long to get action, you create and breed cynicism in your group of supporters,” says Costello.

Activists Believe Race Drew the Closure Out

Eubanks suspects his joining the campaign leant it additional legitimacy within the community. “I think it was an opportunity to show that this isn’t a group of white people attacking a Black business, because that was the narrative beforehand,” he says.

Still, one factor that Eubanks believes heavily influenced the lack of urgency to get the slaughterhouse closed was race. Lithonia is “a small, Black community,” says Eubanks. “We really do believe that if this had been another community, a more affluent community, it would have definitely been shut down,” he says. “If this had been a more powerful community this would have been an issue that was shut down immediately.”

The lack of attention paid to Black and Brown communities has been an issue for social movements for generations. Environmental groups often ignore Indigenous communities, feminists often ignore Black women and animal rights advocates often overlook slaughterhouses in majority-Black neighborhoods.

“The animal rights community needs to make sure that we are not operating in a bubble and that we are pulling in the people,” Eubanks says. In recent years, the animal rights movement has shifted toward paying more attention to inclusion, with many organizations being more intentional about issues of equity and justice in how they allocate their resources.

Meanwhile, recent research suggests that animal-centered protests may actually backfire, leading some activists to shift towards putting the emphasis on arguments other than animal rights — such as zoning laws. 

Part of the evolving movement is also about increasing buy-in from Black and Brown communities. Apex recently launched a movement guide on why food systems issues are specifically important to marginalized racial groups, and if animal rights groups want to be more effective, they’d be wise to take note.


Grace Hussain wrote this article for Sentient.


get more stories like this via email