According to the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), calendar year 2015 was the safest year since the federal government began recording mining safety indicators in 1978. Calling it “the safest year in mining history,” the administration reported that 2015 had the lowest numbers of fatalities and death rates on record.
Only 28 miners were killed while on the job in 2015, down from 45 total fatalities the year before. The overall fatal injury rate in 2014 had been 0.0144 fatalities per individual employed minor, and it declined to a rate of 0.0096 in the year of 2015.
When it came to all injuries, not just those that resulted in deaths, the total rate also declined. In 2014, the rate of injury was 2.44, and in 2015 that rate was only 2.28.
The rate of injury and fatality decreased in specific mining settings as well as overall. MSHA provided information on coal mines, metal and nonmetal mines, and mining contractors as part of their overall report on mine safety this past year.
The number of miners on the job did decline alongside these rates. The 366,584 individual miners employed in 2014 saw their number reduced to only 349,262 in the following year. However, this does not change the fact that the number of those miners who experienced a fatality or any other workplace injury declined at a pace that was faster than the correlating number of miners.
“The progress we made in 2015 is good news for miners and the mining industry. It is the result of intensive efforts by MSHA and its stakeholders that have led to mine site compliance improvements, a reduction of chronic violators, historic low levels of respirable coal dust and silica, and a record low number of mining deaths,” MSHA administrator Joseph A. Main said in a press release.
