I'm Aisha Roscoe and this is the Sunday story.

In a journalist career, there's often a story or two

that will just end up following you.

Like long after you filed your first piece, far. following you

following you found your first piece, far beyond just covering your beat,

it becomes a kind of calling.

These are stories that push you to dig deeper and lean in closer with the hope that

your reporting could help deliver justice for those who suffered.

Today on the show, the story that has followed Howard Burkis.

Howard is a beloved now retired correspondent here at NPR whose investigative reporting on coal mine safety and

black lung disease spans a decade.

Since 2012, Howard and his reporting partners have been talking to dozens of minors in

Appalachia who suffer from black lung disease reporting that has exposed the

government's failure to protect them. The doctor says my lungs started shutting down,

they said it is hardened, it's like a lump of coal.

It's bad when you can walk outside and all that error out there

and you can't get none in your lungs.

For instance just trying to take a bag of trash out.

Steps and heels, I can walk up my driveway and check my mailbox.

You get up hacking, spitting black and blood.

Coughing to the point of almost throwing up.

This year, Howard Burcas came out of retirement to pick up the investigation again.

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