Print9.2.3 Safety, Health, and Environment
There were four mine explosions in the U.S. in the first decade of this century, including one that was the worst such explosion in the past 40 years. Globally, there several high-profile mine disasters from New Zealand to China to Brazil, and many other countries in between. Although the number of fatalities in each of these was far less than in many other disasters, the public has a much lower tolerance for a mine fatality than other disasters. A typical response to the news headlines by the average person on the street was ‘this is terrible, why do we need to mine, why should we be putting these people at risk?’ And as you might expect, these events provoked strong legislative responses across the globe, resulting in not only legislation for improvements, but in some cases, a substantial over response.
As this played out, the U.S. industry in particular, but the global industry as well, realized that they needed to be more proactive. They realized that it was not sufficient to merely comply with regulations. They needed to take additional steps to eliminate: major safety hazards, e.g. a mine explosion, that result in multiple fatalities; major health hazards, e.g. silica dust, that result in debilitating occupational diseases; and major hazards, e.g. tailing dam failure, that result in environmental disasters. During this period there was every reason to believe that one more high-profile disaster would result in the mining industry losing its “social license” to mine. In other words, the public, and by extension their legislators, would decide that ‘enough-is-enough and we’re going to ban this activity regardless of its other benefits.’ The industry was duly alarmed and knew they had to take action to eliminate these disasters2.
The focus of this discussion is not the general topics of safety, health, and environment, how we apply our engineering and science skills to achieve safe and healthful workplaces, and do so in an environmentally responsible fashion, but rather on the management of safety, health, and environmental activities to help eliminate mining disasters. We, as industry in general and mining in particular, have been complying with regulations for decades, and yet every year workers die and environmental accidents occur. Safety and health were the focal points of the conversation, and the turning point was the report published by the National Commission for Mine Safety, Technology, and Training. This report advocated a more aggressive and proactive approach to mine safety, and the CEOs of the major mining companies signed a pledge committing to take the steps necessary to eliminate fatalities and reduce injuries. Mitigating environmental risks was not addressed at that time. However, the methodology to achieve this concept of zero harm3 in safety and health can be applied directly to the environment scenario as well. In the next lesson, we’ll introduce this methodology.
2In the U.S., a mining accident in which three or more persons are killed is designated as a disaster. This number is determined by MSHA and the number sometimes changes over different presidential administrations.
3 This implies that the activity should be conducted in a way that results in zero harm to the mineworker's safety or health. The concept is directly applicable to the environment as well, indicating that the activity should result in no permanent harm or damage to the environment.