ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the analysis of advancing medical knowledge on miners' respiratory disease up to 2006. By the 1990s, the British underground coal mining industry had virtually disappeared, with production centred on privately owned open-cast mines where machinery was much more important than labour power. The struggle to have emphysema and bronchitis scheduled as industrial diseases was a long one, and success was only achieved towards the end of the twentieth century, when the British coal mining industry was in its death throes. Dembe suggests that several inter-related factors underpin the contested tussle over the recognition of occupational ill-health. The HSE undertook a review of static and personal dust sampling equipment and in 1999 began field trials at ten mines to assess the capabilities of the various instruments. The final acts in the long drama of miners' lung disease were played out against the background of a crumbling coal industry in which a major change in its relationship with government had taken place.
