Mining
cmonforton | February 21, 2011Freshman Congressman Larry D. Bucshon (R) of Evansville, Indiana is a cardiothoracic surgeon. His father was an underground coal miner and a member of the United Mine Workers Union for 37 years. Both his grandparents were coal miners. But, Republican-controlled Capitol Hill is now the Twilight Zone when I heard him say the following last week at a congressional hearing:"I see a lot of patients with workplace related respiratory problems, some of which, to put it bluntly, are their own issue because they refuse to wear safety equipment regardless of whether there are regulations in place to…
cmonforton | February 8, 2011I was already tired of President Obama repeating the Republican's rhetoric about big, bad regulations, how they stifle job creation, put an unnecessary burden on businesses, and make our economy less competitive. He did so last month in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal and in his State of the Union address. But yesterday, the White House went too far.
In advance of the President's speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the chief of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) threw two OSHA initiatives under the bus. Right after mentioning President Obama's January 18…
cmonforton | February 3, 2011The contrast is striking. Look at the screenshot of the outcome of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs' (OIRA) review of two Labor Department rules to address flaws in our worker health and safety system. One is a proposal by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to crack down on mine operators who habitually violate mine safety regulations. No more warning letters or slaps on the wrist. Once a mine operator is notified he has a "pattern of violations," a single serious violation of the law observed by an inspector at any time in the next 90 days will result in…
lborkowski | January 18, 2011by Rena Steinzor, cross-posted from CPR Blog
Sixteen months ago, President Obama stood in the well of Congress and issued a ringing call for a progressive vision of government. Working to persuade Members of Congress to adopt health care reform, he said that"large-heartedness...is part of the American character." Our ability to stand in other people's shoes. A recognition that we are all in this together; that when fortune turns against one of us, others are there to lend a helping hand."
Many took comfort from that vision, the first avowedly affirmative one we had heard from a President…
cmonforton | December 21, 2010By the end of 2011, the Labor Department's worker safety agencies expect to issue six new rules to better protect workers from on-the-job hazards. In the Department's regulatory plan issued yesterday, OSHA projects it will finalize four rules while MSHA expects to complete two new standards. As I've written before, these plans quickly become stale because target dates are missed, new issues emerge and political winds shift, but they still give us a snapshot inside the agencies and the Administration's regulatory strategies at a moment in time.
Of the four rules OSHA expects to finish in…
lborkowski | December 2, 2010Mary Kay Magistad of PRI's The World surveys the cost of China's huge appetite for coal and reports that it's harmful to workers as well as air quality. She interviews 37-year-old coal miner Zhong Guangwei, who developed a severe case of pneumoconiosis, or black lung disease, after just 10 months of working in a coal mine in the Shanxi province.
"Down in the mine, the coal dust was so thick, we couldn't even see people who were four or five feet away," Zhong says. "We had to just shout out to each other, to see who was around. There were no safety precautions, and the ventilation was terrible…
cmonforton | November 26, 2010Our friend and APHA OHS colleague Mark Catlin has assembled on YouTube an amazing collection of more than 500 environmental health and safety film clips. The video collection contain footage dating back to the 1920's, with loads WWII-era films produced by the U.S. military, Public Health Service and companies promoting tires, asbestos, oil, steel, tetraethyl lead, and more. The collection has already had a million hits this year.
One of my favorites, Safety Styles, features WWII pin-up model Veronica Lake. The actress, known for her flowing long blonde peakapoo hair style, encourages…
cmonforton | November 24, 2010A second, more powerful explosion today rocked the Pike River coal mine in Greymouth, New Zealand. This event forced government and company officials to declare that the 29 miners are surely dead. The initial blast occurred on Friday, Nov 19 deep in the mine and rescue attempts had been thwarted by dangerous gas levels. The country's prime minister John Key said, "This has been the news that all of New Zealand has been dreading. From the moment of the first explosion, [mine rescuers] have spent every waking hour tirelessly working, searching for a way to bring these men home alive. That…
cmonforton | November 3, 2010For the first time in the agency's history, the Labor Department's Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) went to federal court to ask that a dangerous coal mine be shut down until it fixes its safety problems once and for all. In its official complaint to the U.S.district court for the eastern district of Kentucky, the agency refers to Section 108(a)(2) saying:Massey Energy's Freedom Mine #1 is "engaged in a pattern of violation of mandatory health and safety standards that, in the Secretary's judgment, constitute a continuing hazard to the health or safety of miners."
MSHA's new…
cmonforton | October 26, 2010Melissa Lee's life changed forever on May 20, 2006 when her husband Jimmy, 33 was killed, along with four other workers, in an explosion at the Kentucky Darby coal mine. Afterwards, she not only had four sons to raise without a dad, but as soon as Melissa started speaking up to demand mine safety improvements, she was harassed and threatened by defenders of coal mine operators. Four years since her husband's death, Melissa is still speaking up, this time in a campaign ad running in Kentucky's 6th district in support of Congressman Ben Chandler (D-KY). The incumbent is in a tight race…
lborkowski | October 20, 2010After last week's triumphant rescue of 33 miners from Chile's San José mine, attention has turned to mine safety in Chile and worldwide.
The Associated Press reports that President Sebastian Piñera fired the top regulators from Chile's mine safety agency and promised to triple its budget. In the weeks following the San José collapse, at least 18 small mines were shut down for safety violations. Piñera has promised that in the coming days he'll unveil a proposal for more effectively protecting Chilean workers, and a commission is investigating the San José disaster and will recommend…
cmonforton | October 19, 2010Estevan R. Benavidez's family says he was a happy-to-lucky, 20 year old. He graduated from Miami (AZ) High School in 2008, was a talented tattoo artist, liked to fish, eat junk food, and spend time with his young daughter. On January 9, 2010 he was working for Ames Construction as a laborer at the Freeport McMoRan copper mine in his hometown. He reported to work at 6:30 am, but he never made it home alive.
Benavidez was working with several other men to construct a new reservoir at the surface copper mine. The large lined reservoir holds a sulfuric acid mix used to extract the copper…
cmonforton | October 14, 2010Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and MSHA asst. secretary Joe Main are proposing new rules to protect U.S. coal mine workers from developing illnesses related to exposure to respirable coal mine dust. The most commonly known adverse health effect is black lung disease, but exposure is also associated with excess risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, progressive massive fibrosis, chronic bronchitis, and emphysema. The proposal, scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on Oct 19,* takes a comprehensive approach to the problem. I've not had a chance to read carefully the entire…
lborkowski | October 13, 2010All 33 of the miners who were trapped in Chile's San José mine have been safely lifted to the surface, as have the six rescuers who descended into the mine during the operation. Shift supervisor Luis Urzua was the last miner lifted to safety in the specially designed capsule that traversed the more than 2,000 feet between the miners' refuge and the surface.
The miners' survival for 69 days underground and their triumphant rescue is a story of fortitude, ingenuity, and teamwork. Chileans have much to be proud of and celebrate today. Audiences around the world have been watching the rescue…
lborkowski | October 13, 2010Sixty-nine days after an explosion trapped 33 miners 2,000 feet underground in the San José copper and gold mine in Copiapó, Chile, rescuers have begun lifting miners to the surface. As of 6am this morning, eight miners have been pulled to safety: Florencio Avalos, Mario Sepulveda, Juan Illanes, Carlos Mamani, Jimmy Sanchez, Osman Araya, José Ojeda, and Claudio Yañez.
The Associated Press explains that a specially constructed "Phoenix" capsule is raised and lowered, bringing one miner at a time through a 28-inch diameter hole. Each miner is equipped with an oxygen tank, communications…
lborkowski | October 6, 2010After 29 miners were killed by an explosion at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine on April 5, the Mine Safety and Health Administration stepped up inspections at 89 coal mines that had poor safety records. Even so, nine workers have been killed working inside mines, and another four using machinery near mine entrances, in the six months since that disaster. The Washington Post's David Farhrenthold and Kimberly Kindy describe several of the mineworkers' deaths and explore reasons why increased enforcement hasn't translated into safer mines:
Trying to explain why repeated federal citations…
cmonforton | October 1, 2010The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) is preparing to propose new regulations to protect coal mine workers from the respirable dust hazards that cause black lung disease. In May, the Labor Department's regulatory agenda indicated that MSHA would propose a rule in September. The White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) completed its review of the rule, deemed to be economically significant, on September 29. The proposal was returned to MSHA from OIRA with the notation that it is approved "consistent with change." Depending on the complexity of…
cmonforton | September 21, 2010MSHA announced today that it will be issuing on September 23 an emergency temporary standard (ETS) to improve a practice to prevent coal dust explosions. The rule addresses "rock dusting"----the decades old practice of generously applying pulverized limestone dust throughout a coal mine to dilute the potential power of a coal dust explosion. As NIOSH's Man and Teacoach explain:"...the rock dust disperses, mixes with the coal dust and prevents flame propagation by acting as a thermal inhibitor or heat sink; i.e., the rock dust reduces the flame temperature to the point where devolatilization…
lborkowski | August 31, 2010
New Solutions: The Drawing Board is a monthly feature produced by the journal New Solutions. Read more about it here.
By Anne Fischel and Lin Nelson
We write to you as teachers and researchers concerned about the environmental and occupational health hazards impacting communities living and working in mining sites across North America and the world.
Through our project, "No Borders: Communities Living and Working with Asarco," we have spent the last 5 years looking at those affected by and affecting the work of the Asarco corporation, one of the oldest and largest mining, smelting and…
cmonforton | August 25, 2010My temporary home for the last week has been a hotel just off of I-64 at Exit 44 in Beckley, West Virginia. The immediate exit-ramp neighborhood consists of a Hooters, Dairy Queen, IHOP, McDonalds, and several gas stations. When I'm on the road, I try to keep up my daily walking routine, but the sidewalk that hugs this busy thoroughfare is particularly unappealing. Rather than resigning myself to laps around the hotel parking lot, I decided to take my exercise routine in a new direction: the driveways inside the Sunset Memorial Cemetery.
Over the last seven days, I've logged 30 miles…