Page 45 - Advances In Productive, Safe, and Responsible Coal Mining

3
Zero Harm coal mining

Tom Hethmon
Vice President, Health & Safety, SSR Mining, Inc., Vancouver, BC, Canada

Safety (noun): “Freedom from danger and risks.”
Concise Oxford Dictionary

“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high
and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our
mark.”
Michelangelo: Sculptor, painter, architect, engineer, poet. 1475–1564

“The most important thing to come out of a mine is the miner.”
Frederic Le Play: French mining engineer and mine inspector. 1806–1882

3.1 Introduction

For as long as coal mining has been a human endeavor, safety, or the lack thereof, has
been an overriding and inseparable challenge. In many instances, safety is the deter-
mining factor in the economic viability and survival of both coal mines and coal
miners [1–4]. It is undeniably hazardous work when viewed from the perspective
of optimizing production to the greatest extent possible, which requires accepting risk
to a point that harm to miners and the mine cripples or destroys production capacity—
as has been the case in many coal mine disasters. However, this outcome is clearly not
inevitable. The story of coal mining and its development as an industry and as a cat-
alyst for industrial and societal growth is the story of the double-edged struggle to
simultaneously leverage and control risk. Over its long history, the painful reality
of injury, illness, and death has forged a subtle fatalism across the coal industry
(Fig. 3.1), an industry that desires and celebrates safety excellence, but which lacks
clear consensus regarding how to achieve safety excellence. This is most apparent
in countries like the United States (US) where significant differences of opinion exist
about the structure of regulation in relation to industry best practice.
It is both appropriate and overdue that a text be devoted to the means and mech-
anisms of coal mining with “zero harm.” This is not the first time a concerted effort has
been invested in reviewing this topic, but the inherent stigma of danger and the
industry’s safety performance over hundreds of years has made serious efforts to com-
municate the messages contained in this book somewhat self-limiting. Few industry
representatives, academics, government officials, or labor experts have acknowledged

Advances in Productive, Safe, and Responsible Coal Mining. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-101288-8.00007-9
Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.