Our lungs do a pretty good job. Some people spend a lifetime breathing smoke, sawdust, car exhaust, but some things are just too much.

This is how Mackey Branham Jr. breeds.

I've always been a coal miner and if I would give me lungs to where I could go back tomorrow, I would.

It's just in my blood.

NPR's Howard Burghis interviewed Mackie in a black lung clinic in Pike County, Kentucky.

As of last December, the federal government had recorded 99 cases of so-called complicated black

lung in the last five years.

People for whom breathing is as hard as it is for Mackey Branham.

You're asking if I would do it again if I had fresh lungs.

Yes, I would do it again because it provided good for my family.

Also in December, NPR released findings from a new investigation.

Howard Birkis and a team of reporters got data from 11 black lung clinics throughout Appalachia, data the government hadn't collected or looked at.

The numbers showed that advanced black lung, the most serious stage of the disease caused by inhaling dust from mining

is at least 10 times more common than federal statistics had indicated.

I'm in bad shape, man. I mean, I can no longer provide for my family and I can't get

out and do nothing around the house like I normally would with them.

It tires your nerves up. Today on Outside in we've got our first collaboration with an outside producer.

Is that me?

Why is that ringing here?

Benny Becker is a reporter at W.M.T.

Covering jobs and money in the Appalachian coal fields

for the Ohio Valley resource.

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