Black Lung Disease reappeared among Queensland coal miners because of a "catastrophic failure" in the regulatory system designed to protect the health and safety of workers.

The damning parliamentary report titled "Black Lung, White Lies" (.pdf link) says those failures led to 21 coal workers being diagnosed with Black Lung, or coal workers' pneumoconiosis (CWP). 

"The committee found that there has been a catastrophic failure, at almost every level of the regulatory system, intended to protect (the) health and safety of coal workers in Queensland," the report said.

CWP X-Rays

Health officials had hoped the disease had been wiped out during the 1980s, but re-emerged in 2015.  The report says many more coal workers are likely to be diagnosed.

One of the failures was that the agency charged with overseeing the health of coal workers - the Health Surveillance Unit (HSU) - reported to the Department of Natural Resources and Mines (DNRM) - which exists to promote and support the industry.

"From its establishment, the HSU failed to undertake any actual health surveillance. It served as nothing more than a storage unit for miners' chest X-rays and health records," the report reads.  "The responsibility for identifying problems, errors or trends in coal miners' health assessments was left entirely to the relevant mine operator, its NMA, and the individual mine worker."

Labor MP Jo-Ann Miller says health care workers, particularly radiologists, who failed to sound alarms as they dealt with patients with CWP shoulder a special level of responsibility. alloescort

"There has been a failure in relation to the doctors, the radiologists, at almost every level — the radiologists in particular cannot walk away from this scot-free," Ms Miller said.  "There has been 30 years whereby the doctors have been asked to look after the coal miners' health and they have failed catastrophically as well as the department (of Health)".

The report recommends the state should use mining royalties to pay for the authority and health and safety activities.