China miners and black lung disease

(picture by Ming Xia on Flickr)

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-02/16/content_12021599.htm

This article raises the issue of occupational disease related to mine work in China. If the protesters use to work in Gold mine, the disease can be related to any type of mine-work. Nowadays, China is the first producer of coal (http://www.worldcoal.org/coal/coal-mining/) . As of 2005, the country had around 24000 coal mines meeting 70% of the country's annual energy demand. Many mines are underground (versus open-pit mining)and the concentration of dust accumulates in the cavities and in the lungs of the workers, thus poisoning lungs' scavenger cells . The result is a chronicle disease called pneumoconiosis. A treatment to protect the healthy cells is available but expensive, which lead to the question: in China, who is responsible for paying a disease caught at the work place and here, in the mines?

The article underlines the great number of owner over a short period of time (37 owner in 22 years) and how the miners are not able to know under which they caught the disease. In a communist system, in theory, the community would have been responsible to pay for the workers healthcare. But in modern China with the rise of capitalism, the owner is responsible. Thus there is a gap between communist government and capitalist policies.

The issue of mine-related occupational disease is not only in China but wherever mines are present. In the USA, the issue of occupational disease is a sensitive and complex one. The government established a worker compensation, which attribute a price that the company pay to the worker for each type of accident, including black-lung disease. However, chronicle diseases are difficult to prove to be occupational. On one hand, in the USA, miners change often of mines, on the other hand only the mine doctor can call the disease "occupational" and it was observed that many miners were reluctant to go to the company doctor. Therefore it is difficult to prove where did the miner caught it. If the disease is proved to be occupational, the maximum compensation stays low compared to the cost of the health care. Miner receive two third of their wages for less than ten years.

Nevertheless, in the USA, even though the policies are not perfect, prevention has increased, lowering the number of casualties in mines.

In China the number of mines reflect the country development and energy growing needs.

To tackle the issue, the government wants, to establish occupational disease center to diagnose the diseases. The government also tried to lower the diseases and death related to mine work in 2005 by shutting down 7000 mines. But the desire to make profit is sometimes stronger than security measures and some of the mines are reopen not long after they have been closed. In the article, a chinese lawyer believe that "the local government should become involved in the case to ensure workers receive sufficient compensation to pay for medical treatments,but a problem remain: all workers do not have labor contracts. Here the provincial government paid the workers for the medical treatment but is still searching the owner of the mine. The question for how long can they pay to cover the medical expense of those men? What will happen if others are diagnosed with pneumoconiosis?