Page 57 - Advances In Productive, Safe, and Responsible Coal Mining

Zero Harm coal mining 43

anecdotal experience in reducing risk and safety incidents. However, despite reports
of temporal benefits, there is an inadequate body of research that provides clear,
empirical support to define the real intervention effectiveness of safety and health
management systems. The reason for this lack of evidence is two-fold. First, this type
of research is extremely complex given the large number of dependent variables that
compose these systems and the varied independent variables that reflect outputs and
system performance. Second, this research tends to be very invasive and can be dis-
ruptive resulting in difficulty gaining access to mines willing to cooperate with
research needed to help answer what many observers see as an esoteric issue given
the volume of anecdotal evidence that safety and health management systems are
effective. Therefore, it is important that the global mining community collaborate
to facilitate these important research outcomes.
Acceptability in the level of risk a mining company (and its stakeholders and share-
holders, assuming it is publicly owned) is willing to tolerate in human and property
loss is an underserved but important concept in any discussion of Zero Harm and
related topics. Are coal-mining companies required to define a specific level of
acceptable operational risk? Is Zero Harm such a standard? Zero Harm is an aspiration
relating to safety and health outcomes. If an organization was aware of the specific
degree of risk necessary from all its operations in order to achieve Zero Harm, it would
by default develop a level of acceptable risk, or at least a range for acceptable risk.
This is a difficult activity to accomplish given the inherent lack of reliable failure data
for various mining equipment and activities to aid in defining appropriate risk levels;
e.g., probability consequence¼risk. As such, few companies are able to rely on
objective data to determine risk calculations. The greater the subjectivity introduced
in risk assessment, the greater the potential for risk error, risk blindness, and the like-
lihood of having the risk expressed in the form of an incident. Subjective error,
whether an individual making a behavioral decision or a mining engineering team
making a team-based decision, in the formal risk assessment process can introduce
bias into effective risk management.
There are few statutorily defined levels of acceptable risk for safety in mining. By
default, organizations make decisions regarding acceptable risk every day that they
operate through decisions and actions taken. The exception is governments who uti-
lize numerical risk criteria when promulgating occupational and environmental expo-
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sure standards. For example, the application of a one-in-one million (10 ) lifetime
risk criteria to the development of pulmonary fibrosis from chronic exposure to a spe-
cific airborne dust defines an acceptable level of risk. That is, setting the occupational
exposure limit of an airborne dust such that the resulting exposure limits the potential
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of developing pulmonary fibrosis to no more than 10 .
In the absence of government mandates, each company must define acceptable risk
for themselves. For many, it takes the form of geotechnical risk as safety factors or
probability of failure in relation to ground control or slope stability [25]. For others,
acceptable risk will be expressed as a variety of qualitative decisions using decision-
making criteria such as the hierarchy of control so that when a critical risk control falls
outside the defined level of control within the hierarchy, it requires approval from a
higher level of authority in the organization.