"Slow-Motion Tragedy for American Workers"

"Lung-damaging silica, other toxic substances kill and sicken tens of thousands each year as regulation falters"

"PORT BYRON, New York — Six weeks before Chris Johnson was born in 1974, the U.S. government issued a warning about a substance that would nearly kill him 30 years later.

The substance was silica, a component of rock and sand that is the scourge of miners, sandblasters and other workers who breathe it in. When pulverized into dust, it can cause silicosis — a scarring of the lungs that leads to slow suffocation — as well as lung cancer.

This was no newly discovered hazard. The ancient Greeks and Romans were mindful of it. Labor Secretary Frances Perkins launched a national campaign against it in the 1930s after the knifelike particles dispatched hundreds of tunnel workers in West Virginia."

Jim Morris, Jamie Smith Hopkinse, and Maryam Jameel report for the Center for Public Integrity June 29, 2015.