Now near defunct, coal mining previously represented a huge industry employing hundreds of thousands of men in the UK, especially the North of England.
Exposure to inorganic dusts causes a range of medical problems, especially involving the chest, including: pulmonary fibrosis, coal worker's pneumoconiosis and progressive massive fibrosis (PMF).
A good proportion of these workers also smoked, so the initial presentation with a 'mass on chest x-ray' poses a diagnosis conundrum. With serial old films, cases like this one confirmed PMF.