Howard Berkes

For decades, miners have called for limits on highly toxic silica dust, which they're exposed to while mining. An investigation shows its impact and the weakness of proposed rules to protect them.

Allan McDonald, who directed the booster rocket project at NASA contractor Morton Thiokol, urged delaying the launch of the space shuttle before it exploded in 1986. He has died at age 83.

The power of family history can lead a person to do a lot of things. For Howard Berkes, the family tradition of facing crises head-on led him to sign up for experimental testing of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Howard Berkes covered the 1980 eruptions of Mount St. Helens for NPR and has returned to the volcano for multiple stories over the years. He recalls the massive blast and its aftermath.

Al Haynes has died at age 87. He was the captain of United flight 232 when it crashed in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1989 after total hydraulic failure. 184 of 296 people survived.

A Labor Department audit found no correlation between the federal system that fines mining companies for unsafe conditions and safety in mining operations.

Coal miners will press members of Congress to fully restore a coal excise tax that supports miners diagnosed with black lung. The tax was cut more than 50% at the end of last year.

A top mine safety regulator testified before Congress that no new regulations are needed to protect workers from deadly silica dust, despite an epidemic of advanced black lung disease.

Miners across Appalachia are dying of black lung. Now they're coming to terms with decades of dedication to a job that would drastically change their lives and that of their families.

Federal regulations for silica dust in coal mines haven't changed in decades. But since an NPR/Frontline report into black lung, some are calling for a new response.

The review comes in response to an NPR and Frontline investigation that revealed the failure of government regulators to identify and prevent dangerous conditions.

An extensive NPR and Frontline investigation finds that government data showed that thousands of miners were exposed to toxic dust. And despite multiple warnings, regulators didn't act to stop it.

More than 2,000 miners in Appalachia are dying from an advanced stage of black lung. NPR and Frontline have found the government had multiple warnings and opportunities to protect them, but didn't.

In central Appalachia, one in five working coal miners with at least 25 years experience underground now suffers from the deadly disease black lung, according to a new study.

Coal mines comply with new dust control regulations at a near perfect rate, but that may not lead to lower rates of the deadly disease black lung, according to a new report.

A federal trust fund for coal miners who have the deadly disease black lung could run up a $15 billion deficit if a planned funding cut happens at the end of the year.

Confirming what NPR reported in 2016, new studies show the rate of the advanced stage of the deadly disease black lung growing in central Appalachia, including more demand for lung transplants.

Studies, prompted in part by NPR's reports of an epidemic of advanced stages of the disease, provide further evidence of growing rates of the disease — including a bigger demand for lung transplants.

The federal agency that certifies physicians who diagnose black lung confirms it was not consulted, while medical groups call for repeal of the state law that they say will hurt sick coal miners.

There's a change in Kentucky law that puts diagnoses of the deadly coal miners' disease black lung mostly in the hands of physicians who typically work for coal companies.