Howard Berkes
speaker
259 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2026
last heard 9 Aug
Howard Berkes’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
because he says he doesn't feel strong enough to get through a phone conversation.
He's being assessed right now for a double lung transplant.
He has good days and bad days.
In one text that he sent me recently, he said he'd rather be poor and homeless than suffer what he's been going through and knowing it will only get worse.
But he also wrote that he was grateful for the good life mining made possible for him and his family.
He has two daughters he's immensely proud of, one a pharmacist now and the other studying to be a physician's assistant in emergency rooms.
Both were inspired by Danny's suffering from complicated black lung.
And I want to leave you with this.
His older daughter, Sydney, wrote and performed a song about her dad and his disease.
Hey, Aisha.
Thanks for having me back.
I wish I had better news for you this time, but it's always good to talk to you.
That's right.
Sadly, it is getting worse.
The federal research agency that tracks black lung disease, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, tests hundreds of coal miners every year.
And in their latest report, they find that one in three working career coal miners in Appalachia, that's miners there who've toiled underground for at least 25 years, they have black lung disease.
One in three, Ayesha.
Well, by testing working underground miners in Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia.
And they did that in the last five years.
The last time that this group of miners had that rate of disease was 1978, nearly 50 years ago.
Showing 201–220 of 259 · page 11 of 13
← Previous
Next →