Coal Mine Safety and Health

[Excerpt] Safety in the coal mining industry is much improved compared to the early decades of the twentieth century, a time when hundreds of miners could lose their lives in a single accident and more than 1,000 fatalities could occur in a single year. Fatal injuries associated with coal mine accidents fell almost continually between 1925 and 2005, when they reached an all-time low of 23. As a result of 12 deaths at West Virginia’s Sago mine and fatalities at other coal mines in 2006, however, the number of fatalities more than doubled to 47. Fatalities declined a year later to 33, which is comparable to levels achieved during the late 1990s. In addition to the well above-average fatal injury rates they face, coal miners suffer from occupationally caused diseases. Prime among them is black lung (coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, CWP), which still claims about 1,000 fatalities annually. Although improved dust control requirements have led to a decrease in the prevalence of CWP, there is recent evidence of advanced cases among miners who began their careers after the stronger standards went into effect in the early 1970s. In addition, disagreement persists over the current respirable dust limits and the degree of compliance with them by mine operators. In the wake of the January 2006 Sago mine accident, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) was criticized for its slow pace of rulemaking earlier in the decade. MSHA standard-setting activity quickened starting later that year, however, after enactment in June of the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act (MINER, P.L. 109-236). The MINER act, the first major amendment to federal mine safety law since 1977, emphasized factors thought to have played a role in the Sago disaster (e.g., emergency oxygen supplies, post-accident communication and tracking systems, deployment of rescue teams) and imposed several rulemaking deadlines on MSHA. Accordingly, the agency published final regulations on emergency mine evacuation in December 2006, civil penalties in March 2007, and rescue teams as well as asbestos exposure in February 2008. Some policymakers remain dissatisfied with MSHA’s performance. These sentiments most recently led to House passage, in January 2008, of the Supplemental Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act (S-MINER, H.R. 2768). It incorporates language from the Miner Health Enhancement Act (H.R. 2769), such as requiring MSHA to adopt as mandatory exposure limits the voluntary limits (to chemical hazards, for example) recommended by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. S-MINER also requires MSHA to more closely review and monitor operator plans that include retreat mining, the practice used at Utah’s Crandall Canyon mine where six miners and three rescuers lost their lives in 2007. The President has said he will veto S-MINER as passed by the House. In light of rulemaking activity required this year by the MINER act and the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008 (P.L. 110-161), MSHA asked the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for assistance. Congress increased MSHA’s appropriation between FY2007 ($302 million) and FY2008 ($334 million). The Administration’s FY2009 budget request for MSHA is $332 million

An Empirical Study on the Volatility of Public Opinion on Coal Mine Safety Accidents

This paper empirically studies the volatility of public opinion evolution on coal mine safety accidents based on weekly average data of coal mine accidents from January 2011 to May 2014 in Baidu search index. The findings are as follows: The volatility of public opinion evolution of coal mine safety accidents shows some characteristics such as aggregation, ARCH effect. And, the estimation of a GARCH model shows that public opinion evolution of coal mine safety accidents has conditional heteroscedasticity character, and this GARCH model successfully portrays the volatility of the public opinion on coal mine safety accidents

Coal Mine Safety Comprehensive Evaluation Based on Extension Theory

AbstractThis paper indicates that Extenics theory can be used to solve the problem of mine safety. The method includes 4 steps: building the evaluation indexes system and matter-element model, determining the classical field and controlled field of the matter-element model of the coal mine safety comprehensive evaluation, determining the connection function of each index on every safety level and determining the evaluation grade. This paper builds up a coal mine safety comprehensive evaluation indexes system and a matter-element model of coal mine based on extension theory, and then illustrates.the model using a case of Bei-zao Mine and its data

Fact Sheet: Support Legislation to Protect the Safety and Health of America’s Workers (H.R. 5663)

[Excerpt] The nation’s job safety laws were enacted 40 years ago. The Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) has never been updated. Penalties are weak even in cases where workers are killed, the government’s enforcement tools are limited and protections for workers who raise job safety concerns are woefully inadequate. Legislation has been introduced in the Congress to prevent future disasters and protect the safety and health of miners and other workers. H.R. 5663 strengthens the Mine Safety and Health Act and Occupational Safety and Health Act, the nation’s primary job safety laws. The bill – the “Miner Safety and Health Act of 2010” - provides for stepped up enforcement and tougher penalties for employers who flagrantly violate the law and enhances the protection of miners and workers who speak out about job hazards, report injuries and exercise their rights. The mine safety provisions address problems identified after the Upper Big Branch disaster, including increased oversight, enforcement and penalties for mines with a pattern of violations. The provisions to strengthen the OSH Act come from H.R. 2067 – the Protecting America’s Workers Act – legislation introduced last year and the subject of numerous Congressional hearings

Coal mine safety engineering

The progress of coal mine safety may be compared to the development in mining through the years. When coal was first discovered centuries ago, it was taken from river or creek beds and from the outcroppings on the sides of hills. After removing the most accessible coal from the surface, it was necessary to mine the coal by quarrying or stripping the overburden from the coal seams. It is reasonable to assume that when such operations began, accidents of a serious nature also began to occur. Such accidents were no doubt due to rolling rocks or stones, falling material, and by falls of persons --Chapter I--History of Coal Mine Safety, page 1

Data Mining Mining Data: MSHA Enforcement Efforts, Underground Coal Mine Safety, and New Health Implications

Studies of industrial safety regulations, OSHA in particular, often find little effect on worker safety. Critics of the regulatory approach argue that safety standards have little to do with industrial injuries, and defenders of the regulatory approach cite infrequent inspections and low penalties for violating safety standards. We use recently assembled data from the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) concerning underground coal mine production, safety regulatory activities, and workplace injuries to shed new light on the regulatory approach to workplace safety. Because all underground coal mines are inspected at least once per quarter, MSHA regulations will not be ineffective because of infrequent inspections. We estimate over 200 different specifications of dynamic mine safety production functions, including ones using deliberately upward biased estimators, and cherry pick the most favorable mine safety effect estimates. Although most estimates are of insignificant MSHA effects, we select the single regression specification producing the most favorable MSHA impact from the agency viewpoint, which we then use in a policy evaluation. We address the question of whether it would be cost-effective to move some of MSHA's enforcement budget into alternative programs that could also improve the health of the typical miner. Even using cherry picked results most favorable to the agency, MSHA is not cost effective at its current levels. Even though MSHA is a small program when judged against others like OSHA and EPA, MSHA's targeted public health objective could be much better served (almost 700,000 life years gained on balance for typical miners) if a quarter of MSHA's enforcement budget were reallocated to other programs such as more heart disease screening or defibrillators at worksites.

Mine Safety Detection System (MSDS)

Systems Engineering Project ReportThe search, detection, identification and assessment components of the U.S. Navys organic modular in-stride Mine Countermeasure (MCM) Concept of Operations (CONOPS) have been evaluated for their effectiveness as part of a hypothetical exercise in response to the existence of sea mines placed in the sea lanes of the Strait of Hormuz. The current MCM CONOPS has been shown to be capable of supporting the mine search and detection effort component allocation needs by utilizing two Airborne Mine Countermeasure (AMCM) deployed systems. This adequacy assessment is tenuous. The CONOPS relies heavily upon the Sikorsky MH- 60/S as the sole platform from which the systems operate. This reliance is further compounded by the fact both AMCM systems are not simultaneously compatible on board the MH-60/S. As such, resource availability will challenge the MCM CONOPS as well as the other missions for which the MH-60/S is intended. Additionally, the AMCM CONOPS systems are dependent upon the presence of warfighters in the helicopters above the minefield and as integral participants in the efforts to identify sea mines and to assess their threat level. Model Based System Engineering (MBSE) techniques have been combined with research and stakeholder inputs in an analysis that supports these assertions.mhttp://archive.org/details/minesafetydetect1094517457Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Facts About Worker Safety and Health - 2012

[Excerpt] This year marks the 41st anniversary of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the effective date of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. The Act – which guarantees every American worker a safe and healthful working environment – created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to set and enforce standards and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) to conduct research and investigations. This year also marks the 43rd anniversary of the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, and 35th anniversary of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act

Research on VCSEL interference analysis and elimination method

Laser methane gas sensors have been increasingly accepted in coal mine safety monitoring. Most laser spectroscopic methane gas sensors are based in BFB lasers at around 1650nm. However, they suffer from high power consumption and high cost due to temperature control is required for laser diode operation at constant temperature. VCSEL lasers have offered low operation current and low power consumption when operating at non-TEC mode. However, it is found that the interference noise is critical for laser methane detection. This paper report typical results of the laser diode ripple characterization method and methods of noise reduction methods are discussed