Coal mining industry shocked by Queensland black lung scandal

After no cases of black lung for 30 years, the Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Mines, which administers the state's Coal Mine Workers Health Scheme, identified a number of cases of the disease, which is caused by exposure to coal dust.

The review by Monash University sparked by those shock discoveries is scathing. At its core the ugly truth of this scandal is that complacency had set in across the industry; the sector thought black lung was consigned to history, and so let its guard down.

There were "major system failures at virtually all levels" – from a general culture of getting miners to work rather than preventing the disease, to under-qualified radiologists and doctors and inadequate detection equipment.

For example, some potential cases of black lung were written off as being caused by smoking. A staggering two-thirds of the spirometry machines crucial to the detection process (these machines test lung capacity) had not even been calibrated in 2016.

Minerals exploration, production and processing (particularly coal, iron ore, copper and manganese ore) and hydrocarbon exploration, production and refining.

How on earth does this happen in a modern mining sector, a modern health sector, and a modern society?

Queensland's Natural Resources and Mines Minister Dr Anthony Lynham said on Wednesday that "everyone has been at fault", which both damns the entire industry and means individual companies aren't in the gun, at least today. We don't know officially whose mines the 11 confirmed and 18 possible cases came from. 

The eight biggest coalminers in Queensland – Anglo American, Caledon, BHP Billiton, Glencore, Idemitsu, Peabody, Rio Tinto and Vale – have committed to an "interim protocol" for chest X-rays in order to provide "reassurance" to their workforces.

This will include new X-ray regimes, including digital scans and a move to having each X-ray checked by two professionals.

But it's fair to say the mining companies are feeling somewhat shafted by the system too.

When they send a worker off to a "nominated medical adviser" and pay for the health testing required by the law, all they get back is a form saying whether the worker is fit for work.

Leave aside for a moment, if you can, the fact that we now know some of these medical advisers were less that properly qualified, and in some cases (through no fault of their own) didn't actually know they were assessing coalminers.

For the mining companies, accessing further information about the worker's health – and particularly whether they may be at risk to black lung – is not allowed under privacy regulations. That means some mining companies may have been sending workers with health issues back into the danger zone with no knowledge they were doing so. 

Among the review's recommendations – which include improved training for medical professionals, equipment upgrades and a smaller pool of more experienced doctors overseeing testing – is a push to give "greater accessibility of previous job history and health assessment records to inform subsequent assessments of coalmine workers, resulting in a greater ability to monitor changes in respiratory health at an individual level over time".

The coal sector will now start trying to work out just how big this problem is – there are fears there could be hundreds more cases across the industry, and not just in Queensland. As Lynham pointed out, the coal workforce is transient, and it's likely former Queensland workers are now in other areas, such as the Hunter Valley.

Legal action is almost certain to follow as the class action law firms seize on this disaster. And workers' compensation costs associated with these mines will likely spike.

That pain should ensure that black lung remains top of mind for the industry for a long time to come. As it should.