Josh Armes spent 38 years mining coal in West Virginia and Virginia. After he retired, doctors diagnosed him with black lung disease, also known as coal workers' pneumoconiosis (CWP), a condition caused by breathing coal dust that permanently damages the lungs. Armes has needed an oxygen tank to breathe for years. In 2014, a coal operator appealed the federal black lung benefits he had already been receiving, and Armes and his family have spent the last 12 years stuck in appeals limbo, still fighting to get those benefits back.

"Do you have to be dead?" Armes asked, questioning why his diagnosis wasn't enough, according to Josh Armes, a retired coal miner from Grundy, Virginia.

Armes is not alone. A May Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that 40 percent of approved black lung claims between 2013 and 2024 were disputed, mostly by coal operators, and that appealed claims typically take three years or more to resolve. Meanwhile, black lung cases among veteran coal miners in central Appalachia have climbed to their highest rate in nearly 50 years, driven by silica dust common in today's coal seams. Despite this, federal regulators have indefinitely delayed enforcing a silica dust rule that would require mine operators to protect workers from the dust fueling this crisis.

Miners who spent decades underground providing the country's energy deserve a benefits system that doesn't force them to spend their final years proving, again and again, that they are sick. Coal operators should not be able to strip away benefits already awarded, and federal regulators should not be allowed to sit on a safety rule while more miners get sick.

Sign the petition to demand a faster, fairer black lung benefits process and immediate enforcement of the silica dust rule, before more miners are lost waiting for justice they've already earned.i