There have been six recently confirmed cases of black lung disease in Queensland, including one worker at Anglo American's Grasstree mine, and the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union fear that up to 1000 underground coal workers could be at risk.

"The safety of health and wellbeing of our employees at our operations is Anglo Americas number one priority," Oswell said.

"We are committed to providing the safest possible work places through technical engineering support, risk based safety and health management systems, proactive leadership and ongoing consultations with our work forces.

"We are extremely concerned about the recent emergence of cases of coal workers pneumoconiosis, clearly this is a serious and debilitating disease and therefore it is incumbent upon all of us at all levels of the industry to tackle the issues and concerns in an effective and constructive and unified way."

CFMEU industry health and safety representative Jason Hill said: "We're projecting that we're going to have 16 per cent of current and retired coal mine workers with pneumoconiosis."