Fed cuts lead to mine safety setbacks

The safety of Wyoming's miners could be facing setbacks due to federal funding cuts and the firing of federal employees. 

Miners at WE Soda, the trona mine outside Green River formerly owned by Genesis Alkali, are already seeing the effects of actions taken by the federal government, particularly through the canceling of a study meant to assess the impact of trona dust on the health of miners. 

"The lady who was going to do the study is fired," Marshal Cummings explained. "The industrial hygienist got fired, and the endocrinologist got fired. And these are people who dedicated their lives to worker health and safety... They made these plans, thinking that they're going to be helping workers, and now it's dead."

Cummings is an employee at WE Soda and the president of the United Steelworkers Local 13214 union. He is also the one who requested a Health Hazard Evaluation study for the mine, which was scheduled to take place. Then he heard directly from the federal employee leading the study, who told him that she was fired, so the HHE was canceled. Cummings reached out to NIOSH, the federal organization behind the study. Last week, he finally heard back, receiving an email explaining that the organization is not doing any new Health Hazard Evaluations. 

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health is "the federal institute responsible for conducting research and making recommendations for the prevention of work-related injury and illness," according to their website. The organization is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the Department of Health and Human Services. 

The CDC website explains that the HHE Program "helps employees, unions, and employers learn whether health hazards are present at their workplace and recommends ways to reduce hazards and prevent work-related illness," adding that "evaluations are done at no cost to the employees, unions, or employers."

Cummings noted that the fact that government funding has been used for HHEs has helped studies get done in cases where they may not have otherwise. He said it's simply not "the nature of the beast" for companies to use their own resources for studies that might lead to them having to make more changes, buy more safety equipment, or put more restrictions in place to promote worker health and safety. 

Now, without the federal funding or the workers, the studies simply won't be done. 

"It's closed down," Cummings said. "NIOSH will no longer be doing Health Hazard Evaluations, which is terrible because they're the ones that have discovered countless diseases, especially occupational health and respiratory."

When it comes to the safety of trona mining, Cummings requested the HHE to address concerns about the health impacts to miners who are exposed to trona dust. He explained that a study was done in 1983 that showed that 200 trona miners who were tested all "had negative impacts on their respiratory function." These miners struggled in tests measuring how much air they could force out of their lungs and tests measuring how much they lost their breath when walking on a flat surface, according to Cummings. Over 40 years later, not much else is known. 

"Why did it end there?" Cummings asked. "It definitely has an impact, but we just don't know how bad." 

The potential health effects of trona mining are especially not well-known, Cummings pointed out, since there are only a few places on earth with significant trona deposits, including Southwest Wyoming. And without many studies, it's hard to understand the effects. For Cummings, the HHE study would have helped alleviate concerns. 

Having recently attended the funeral of a family friend who died at 67, Cummings has had those concerns brought back to the forefront of his mind. 

"What if it is carcinogenic? What if it is giving people cancer?" he asked. "You shouldn't be getting cancer and dying so young, and you see it a lot with a bunch of these miners. And that's what I requested from NIOSH, a Health Hazard Evaluation on trona dust and a morbidity report on miners in our area." 

Cummings was quick to add that he's not a scientist himself, but that it would put minds at ease to be able to have a study to point to if everything came back clear and no additional precautions were needed. But just when this study that Cummings believes is needed was planned, it was stopped. He described this as "particularly disheartening."

Other health concerns for local miners are also facing potential setbacks due to federal changes. An issue that Cummings has testified and spoken about at a national level is exposure to silica dust and miners developing silicosis, a lung disease. Last year, Cummings was one of those who announced that a new rule regulating silica exposure would be going into place. Now, that rule has been put on hold at a federal level. 

"That's just telling you that they don't care about safety," Cumming said. "All these things are written in blood. All these things are written in sickness."

Cumming pointed out that, "to WE Soda's credit," the company has said that they will move forward as if the silica rule hadn't been paused at their mines. Other mines, however, are no longer required to do the same, and can continue to "run dusty," Cummings said. 

The silica rule being paused could also be connected to the cuts to NIOSH, according to Cummings, since there are no longer enough people to do necessary research to inform regulations. 

"And miners pay the price," Cummings said. 

Cummings blames the Department of Government Efficiency for many of these cuts. He has also had concerns about DOGE putting forward the idea of closing the Green River Mine Safety and Health Administration office, which was listed as a potential way to save costs on the DOGE website. Cummings said that the MSHA office hasn't closed yet, which he credits to "all the noise that the Steelworkers have been making about it in our area." However, the decision could continue to go back and forth, he noted. 

In general, Cummings worries that the nation as a whole is moving away from a desire to help workers. He is also concerned that Wyoming has a particularly bad reputation when it comes to worker safety. 

Last Monday, Cummings gave a speech at the Wyoming Capital to recognize Workers' Memorial Day, a day to remember workers who have been killed, disabled or injured while doing their jobs. The speech took place during a ceremony organized by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. Cummings pointed out that AFL-CIO death assessments have found that Wyoming has the worst rate of any state, with 16 out of every 100,000 workers dying. This number is double the rate of the second-worst state in the nation. 

"Wyoming is going to get a bad rap because they're going to be known as the most dangerous state to work in," Cummings said. 

When it comes to protecting workers, Cummings said he no longer wants words, he wants actions. But he remains concerned that actions that were already in place to study and promote safety are now being paused or canceled.