Nationalisation of the coal industry by the 1945 Labour Government provided Britain with a unique opportunity for preventing the disablement of coal miners. At that time several thousand miners received disability benefits each year for pneumoconiosis in South Wales alone, and the Medical Research Council had started an important series of investigations into the relationships between dust exposure and disease.^1 2 The late Dr John Rogan, Chief Medical Officer of the National Coal Board, with extraordinary far sightedness set up the Pneumoconiosis Field Research which ultimately studied the dust exposure, symptoms, chest radiographs, and lung function of some 50 000 miners over nearly 30 years.³ This research was planned to answer the questions "How much and what kinds of dust cause pneumoconiosis, and what dust concentrations need to be maintained if miners are not to be disabled by the dust that they breathe?" The National Coal Board embarked on a massively costly programme of . . . [Full text of this article]