Black lung is a debilitating, incurable, and often fatal lung disease caused by exposure to coal dust. Great Britain recognized it as an occupational disease by the turn of the 20th century, but the American medical community still denied any relationship between exposure to coal dust and disabling lung disease until the late 1960s, when a movement of Appalachian coal miners, their families, and a few maverick doctors and politicians forced the nation to confront the issue of occupational disease and disability.

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