 I'm here today because I'm angry. I'm angry because I lost my best friend, I lost my husband and my children lost their dad and he could have all been prevented. I had in my mind what I was going to say when I got up here but I guess it'll just have to come from the heart. I stood and watched my husband on the job site. Well now I take that back. I didn't watch him, I watched the cloud of dust that he worked in. He wore the respirator, the filter respirator the last year that he worked. But what good did that do with the cloud of dust that he set in? The blowers didn't work on the drill. The doors wouldn't stay shut and I feel that it could have been prevented, all of it. My husband would sit up at night, he never slept. He had to sit to breathe. We would have to fan him for him to breathe at night. When Terry was diagnosed at the age of 38, he got off the drill. But then, while he was put on, he would get two and three days a week of work so his family was starving. He felt he had to go back on the drill to feed his family. The last year of work, he tried to protect himself but it was too late. But to age of 45, Terry's gone and he wouldn't have lived that long if it hadn't been for the double lung transplant. God spared his life. He gave him two and a half years or more to see his children grow because of the transplantation. Every day miners face hazards. Some hazards they can see, some hazards they can't see. One hazard we can't see as miners is silica dust. Silica dust causes a deadly disease called silicosis. We need to recognize the hazard of silica dust and protect ourselves for the sake of our children, our grandchildren and our future. So what does the term silicosis mean to you? It's a breathing of rock dust into the lungs that affects the lungs and never clears up. To me, silicosis is a it's a dust that comes from the rock. It's like the real fine fiber that contains your body, your veins or whatever you know and for dust, real fine dust. What does silicosis mean to me? It's uh I guess it would be what you breathe and get into your lungs and block you from getting any air. Lung disease. Okay silicosis is a dust that a cold dust that affects the lungs and it it makes it hard for a miner to breathe to walk and affects their total living eventually. Silicosis is a disease that you get from dust that you breathe in your lungs. Well from what I understand it's dust that you cannot see that is in the air and I don't mind sure. When I think of the word silicosis it reminds me of some of my old friends that were deep miners all their life that have a hard time breathing on oxygen and I can see their faces you know not a not a good word to me. Well to me the term silicosis on a personal level means my grandfather sitting in a chair having difficulty breathing couldn't walk to the kitchen table to have dinner whistling when he breathed. Medically what it means to me is a a condition that people get after they've been exposed to silica dust and that dust has gone into their lungs and it stayed there long enough to cause a healthy fact. It can hurt them very quickly or it can hurt them after a period being very quiet not having anything and then really hurt them or kill them later. People who have a very high dose exposure like someone doing sandblasting or would be in a place where the dose would be very high might get a kind of silicosis that would actually fill their lungs with fluid and kill them in a matter of a very short period of time less than years. There's an accelerated one that is a little less exposure that might kill you maybe two to five years and then there's a kind of if you're a minor and you're associated with a smaller amount of silica dust we don't see it the kind that gets us but a smaller amount maybe we wouldn't feel any effect for 15 or 20 years but after that we would start getting sick and we would just gradually go downhill. Father-in-law had it but he passed away and his wife's grandfather had it but he passed away too. Most people I know had silicosis are no longer with us. He died from it so other than that I don't know a whole lot about it you know I know what it is but how it affects you it affects your breathing and everything like that I do know that because that's problems he had. He's an older minor from around central city where I live and he calls a black lung young. He had quite a bit of time underground but he spent 12 years above ground too. He worked on a strip job he was on a he was a helper on a Davey drill actually and he has it and he has a lot of problems breathing now. Well my father was a strip miner and for all his life he started in strip mining when he was 13 years old. He worked in the tunnels for a few years on and off he was in a deep mine for six months but he couldn't take it and here a few years back they found out my father had bad lungs I mean he's they're done he's they can't do nothing with him he's on oxygen 24 hours a day now and it's all because of black lung and silicosis and it's just and we almost lost him which I'm glad he's alive but it's it was rough to see him do that go through that and I wouldn't want anybody to go through that but he's still going luckily. Well the old fellow that I can remember the best was probably 80 years old he died shortly after his 80th birthday and he had a tough time of it the last five years or so he was on oxygen he had a hard time getting out of his chair just to change channels on the TV he had a pretty rough. Like I said I saw my grandfather pass away from and I know how he suffered with it and I sure as heck don't want to don't want to end up with disease like that. The doctor took x-rays they took a breathing test to check my breathing and they told me that there was a small amount of silicosis which they tried to explain to me the best they could and that there was dust in my lungs and that if I didn't if I continued to work in the atmosphere that I was in at that time without some kind of protection I could only make it worse. The mining industry has given me a good living basically money-wise I know nothing else to the biggest degree I couldn't go out and do any real physical labor. I've thrashed it around and I figured I might as well stay with the mining drills whatever. The slung liboise where they introduced I don't know I guess it was gallons of sterile saline into your through tubing into your lungs of course you're asleep through all this it's flushed around in there and withdrawn well it's affected it has affected my my work to the biggest degree like they say I take the shortcuts where I can my hobbies I always like to walk woods nature hunting I've slowed down on all that especially the hunting I do some walking yet not to not to any vigorous degree try to find a job out there it's rough it's real rough to find a job in the workforce and I've operated heavy equipment since 1970 that's all I've ever done and it's a little hard to change jobs and to go into a new workforce that you have no nothing about is taken it's like telling a doctor that told me to change jobs I said it's like taking you out of your doctor's office and making you run heavy equipment I said you're not going to be able to do it it's not that easy I said it's it's real hard to try to get a job out there now that's why I'm why I'm out I'm afraid if I do go out and get another job and there's a lot of physical labor into it that I will not be able to handle it and then if I go to go back to the workforce that I was in before that they're not going to hire me because they're going to know that I had silicosis and they won't hire me back and I'm going to be put out on the street and I used to weigh 255 pound and right now I'm down to 165 pound 170 and it has a lot to do with the silicosis and it has a lot to do with a lot of worrying whether trying to find another job and changing the workforce and every time I go to the doctor he's you're still working at the same place and you got to come out and say yes I mean jobs are hard to find out there it's and it works on me a lot I mean it's worked on my family a lot not not being able to do the stuff I used to be able to do it worked on me a lot and that has to do with some of the weight loss they said you know now if you go into the the mine you're afforded an opportunity to use personal protective equipment you really should use that you don't want that junk in your lungs to begin with I know it isn't quite as easy to breathe and sometimes miners will change that thing so it's easier to breathe and they always giggle about how easy it is to breathe with their mask when they change this thing they're breathing silica they don't know they messed up their mask they may as well take their mask and throw it in the corner my advice is wear your mask again don't get exposed to silica it's a it's a silent killer we don't know that it's in the air to begin with and we don't feel its effect right away but even after we stop the exposure the silica just stays in there and I sort of liken it to a sandstone grinding away at the lungs we're hearing how dangerous it is and how so many people at a young age can get it you know everybody always thought it was you had to be 80 years old to get it and now they're finding that people in their 30s and even maybe even younger getting it yeah there's a lot of particles in the air even at the cleaning plant that you can't see them in the air but till the end of the day you're usually pretty dirty so if you're it's on you you have to be breathing it it doesn't get any better it gets worse it doesn't it doesn't relieve itself even if you're out of the dust force try to avoid as much as you can and wear the right protection when you're around it it's not much more you can do with it