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.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
This is also something we heard repeatedly from the dozens of coal miners we interviewed.
Everywhere I worked, we cut rock.
No matter where you went, you had rock.
A little seam of coal, probably eight inches thick.
The rest of that was rock, six and a half foot.
In Appalachia, that rock contains quartz, and when quartz is ground up by mining machines, it produces a dust that is easily inhaled and contains sharpened particles of silica, which is far more dangerous than coal dust alone.
These guys are being treated like disposable widgets, not human beings.
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The truth is, Aisha, I did move on to other reporting, some of which also involved other aspects of coal mine safety.
But, you know, I met a lot of sick and dying coal miners while I was working on coal mine safety.
I met a lot of crippled workers and their families.
I met a lot of loved ones of miners who were killed on the job.
And I just came to believe that work should not be a death sentence, that coal miners and other workers deserve to go home every night whole and alive.
And here's the thing.
They were supposed to be protected.
This was an era of tougher mine safety laws and a regulatory system that was supposed to protect them.
But clearly, it wasn't working.
There must have been something else going on.
Showing 61–80 of 259 · page 4 of 13
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