Page 28 - Advances In Productive, Safe, and Responsible Coal Mining

14 Advances in Productive, Safe, and Responsible Coal Mining

Table 2.2 Delineation of safety and productivity data: 1971–77
Equivalent US
Number Number fatal incidence production Productivity
of of rate (Fatal (million (tons/miner/
Year miners fatalities IR equiv ) tons) year)
1971 533,267 181 0.127 563 3960
1972 483,239 156 0.096 535 3296
1973 189,679 132 0.087 558 3673
1974 144,480 133 0.073 566 3104
1975 224,412 155 0.069 611 2723
1976 221,255 141 0.064 647 2925
1977 237,506 139 0.059 671 2824

the public and the US Congress. The stagnation of improvement in the fatality rate
coupled with the major (78 deaths) explosion-type disaster in 1968 at Farmington,
West Virginia, led to passage of the 1969 Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety
Act [5], which will be discussed later.
Table 2.2 gives detailed fatality and productivity data from 1971 through 1977,
when the 1977 Federal Mine Safety and Health Act was passed by the US Congress
[5]. Employment in coal mines more than halved over the period, and the number of
fatalities decreased steadily as the percentage of surface-mined coal increased toward
the 1980 level of 59.3%. Productivity decreased significantly as well. In a nutshell,
progress in safety increased while productivity fell greatly. Certainly increased sur-
face mining had an enormous impact on safety performance, and as underground min-
ing diminished dramatically, the number of fatalities did, too. The increase in surface
mining would likely have improved productivity, if it were the only factor influencing
productivity; however, the coal industry had to adjust to the “1969 Act,” which
required many additional nonproduction miners to comply with a comprehensive
set of new regulations, and this resulted in the decline in productivity.

2.2.3 Safety and productivity performance: 1978–2015
Table 2.3 shows progress in more recent years using additional data and measures
from another MSHA source [6] while keeping relative comparisons intact. Remark-
able are the sharp decreases in the number of miners employed and the number of
fatalities (e.g., 1983 marked the first year in which fatalities fell below 100). Follow-
ing this decline in the Fatal IR equiv from 1980 to 1990, significant progress stalled until
breakthroughs occurred in the second decade of the 21st century. The year 2010 mar-
ked the last major disaster, an explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in southern
West Virginia that resulted in 29 fatalities. It is noted that the 2006 Mine Improvement
and New Emergency Response (MINER) Act [7] was passed by the US Congress