Page 37 - Advances In Productive, Safe, and Responsible Coal Mining

Safety and productivity in coal mining—How to make both the top priority 23

the United States. The regulatory process requires full participation of stakeholders in
providing input to a proposed regulation, and it can take a number of years to com-
plete; however, most often it can be completed in 1 or 2 years. To give the nature of the
types of issues that are addressed through rulemaking, new regulations pursued by
MSHA over the past 5 years include the following [15]:

l Maintenance of incombustible content of rock dust in underground coal mines.
l Examinations of work areas in underground coal mines for violations of mandatory health
and safety standards.
l Criteria and procedures for proposed assessment of civil penalties, including an inflation
adjustment.
l Pattern of violations.
l Lowering miners’ exposure to respirable coal mine dust, including continuous personal dust
monitors.
l Proximity detection systems for continuous mining machines in underground coal mines.
MSHA also pursues special or strategic issues to improve mine safety and health
performance through more scrutiny of mine operations that appear problematic
based on certain criteria. Two examples include Impact Inspections and Rules to
Live By.
MSHA initiated the Impact Inspections program in 2010 following the Upper Big
Branch mine disaster (29 miners died). The agency scrutinizes the compliance
records of coal and noncoal mines identifying those who demonstrate a poor com-
pliance history or have particular compliance concerns. These mines are then sub-
jected to an intense inspection involving multiple inspectors. From April 2010 to
May 2016, MSHA had conducted 1156 impact inspections issuing 16,315 citations
and1313orders [16]. On multiple occasions, the MSHA chief has noted that at
mines having received impact inspections, with at least one follow-up inspection,
the impact inspections “have made the miners safer” [17,18].
The Rules to Live By initiative was instituted by MSHA to target prevention of
fatalities that happen one or two at a time, and to reinforce prevention of disasters.
After investigating each of the 623 fatalities that occurred between 2000 and 2009
in all types of mines, MSHA focused on those safety standards that were most violated
in these fatalities, their root causes as determined from citations and accident reports,
and practices used to abate the conditions cited. Four subcategories were created [19]
as follows, to guide emphases during inspections:
l Rules to Live By I (fatality prevention) focuses on 24 frequently cited standards (11 in coal
mining) that cause or contribute to fatal accidents in nine accident categories.
Rules to Live By II (preventing catastrophic accidents) focuses on standards cited during
l
major disasters that contributed to five or more fatalities over the past 10 years.
Rules to Live By III (preventing common mining deaths) focuses on 14 standards (8 in coal
l
mining) cited as a result of at least five mining accidents and resulting in at least five deaths
during the 10-year period from 2001 to 2010.
Rules to Live By IV (preventing common mining deaths) focuses on 2 safety standards (1 in
l
coal mining) cited as a result of at least five mining accidents resulting in at least five fatal-
ities during the 10-year period from 2006 to 2015.