MSHA

April 5, 2015 will mark the fifth anniversary of the coal dust explosion that killed 29 miners at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine (UBB). It was the worst disaster in 40 years in the US coal industry. Since then, some things have changed in coal mine safety. The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) in particular, has focused much of its attention on ways to address failures identified by the UBB disaster. Browse through the agency’s press releases dating back to May 2010 and you’ll see quite a few with some connection to UBB. You’ll notice, for example, recaps of the agency’s “…
I’ll be looking to the Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward Jr. to keep me apprised of the upcoming trial of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship. The trial is scheduled to begin on April 20. That's just a few weeks after the 5th anniversary (April 5) of the massive coal dust explosion that killed 29 mine workers at Blankenship’s Upper Big Branch mine in southern West Virginia. Ward reports this week on Blankenship’s appearance on March 24 before a US magistrate. He plead not guilty (again) to three felony counts, including a conspiracy to thwart federal mine safety inspections. Ward explains…
This week the differences between OSHA’s and MSHA’s websites were oh so obvious. The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) released a new on-line tool to allow users to compare a mining operation’s violations of selected safety standards to the national average. For years, mine-specific violations, penalties, injury reports, exposure sampling results, and other data have been available on MSHA’s website, but this new tool offers something different.  It focuses on a subset of safety violations which most frequently cause or contribute to fatalities and serious injuries. While MSHA…
The AP headline read: “Regulators: Coal dust samples compliant with new rule.”  The accompanying story was based on a news release issued by the Mine Safety and Health Administration on January 15. News outlets throughout US coal mining regions picked up the AP story. It said this: Federal regulators say samples collected from U.S. mines last year found the lowest levels of breathable coal dust since stepped-up efforts aimed at reducing miners’ exposure. The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration says nearly 99 percent of samples taken from August through December at underground and…
With the new year just around the corner, it’s the perfect time to celebrate worker victories of 2014. At In These Times, reporter Amien Essif gathered a list of the nine most important victories of 2014, writing: Much has been made of the incredibly hostile climate for labor over the past few decades. Yet this past year, workers still organized on shop floors, went out on strike, marched in the street and shuffled into courthouses to hold their employers accountable, and campaigned hard for those who earned (or, often enough, didn’t earn) their vote. Legislators, meanwhile, tarried on with…
I took a little time this week to review the regulatory agenda of worker health and safety initiatives which was issued by the Labor Department. The November 21 document contains a mixed bag of unaddressed workplace hazards and slipped deadlines, as well as a few new topics for possible regulatory action. The fault for some of the slipped deadlines falls right on the doorstep of the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), for example, has been working on a rule that would require machines used in coal mines to cut…
US attorney Booth Goodwin II and assistant attorney Steven Ruby announced yesterday a four-count indictment against former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship. Their four year investigation came following the April 2010 disaster at the Upper Big Branch (UBB) coal mine which killed 29 workers. The miners died in a massive coal dust explosion which could have been averted by following fundamental safety precautions. Page 1 of the indictment sums up why Blankeship habitually broke mine safety regulations: “in order to produce more coal, avoid the cost of following safety laws, and make more money…
Our Labor Day tradition continues with the third edition of The Year in US Occupational Health & Safety: Fall 2013 – Summer 2014. Liz Borkowski and I produce it to serve as a resource for activists, researchers, regulators and anyone else who wants a refresher on what happened in the previous 12 months on worker health and safety topics. We prepare it as a complement to the AFL-CIO’s excellent annual Death on the Job report which has been released each spring for the last 23 years. We divide the report into three sections: Happenings at the federal level, activities in state and local…
[Updated below (8/28/14)] Jessica Robinson at Northwest Public Radio reminds us today that penalties assessed are meaningless until they are paid. She updates us on the fatal injury death of silver miner Larry Marek, 53, who was killed in April 2011 at Hecla Mining's Lucky Friday mine. Marek was killed by a massive rock fall. It took rescuers 10 days to recover his body. The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) investigated the incident and socked the company with citations for "unwarrantable failures to comply" with ground support standards. The agency proposed penalties of nearly $…
They wanted to keep these words secret: "two" .....  "two miner operators" ......."worn by the miners. Both"   ......."right miner"   ......."left miner" They are the phrases the Labor Department’s Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) initially redacted from a document requested by Mine Safety and Health News (MSHNews). (You can see the before and after versions here.)  It's not only redaction overkill, but it's made worse coming from the Administration that “pledged to make this the most transparent Administration in history.” The document with the redacted terms  is a citation…
Getting to the truth about the 2010 Upper Big Branch disaster (UBB) is what they wanted. The families of the 29 coal miners who were killed in the Massey Energy coal mine in Raleigh County, WV looked to the investigators for the answers. Jim Beck was instrumental in providing them those answers. Beck was part of the six-person Governor’s Independent Investigation Panel, and he was a key player in finding out the truth. Jim Beck died last week at age 61 from metastatic stomach cancer. “Jim and his team gave me and the other 28 families of UBB the truth of what happened to our loved ones,”…
Coal miner turned whistleblower Justin Greenwell is at the center of a Huffington Post article investigating how the mining industry cheats the worker safety system. Greenwell, who’s now in a legal battle to get back his mining job with Armstrong Coal, a subsidiary of St. Louis-based Armstrong Energy, tipped off federal mine inspectors that the company was submitting misleading coal dust samples to regulators. The samples are used to determine whether a mine is in compliance with safety and health standards designed to protect miners from black lung disease. According to a 2008 posting from…
Labor Secretary Tom Perez announced yesterday a new regulation designed to reduce coal miners’ risk of developing coal mine dust lung disease (CMDLD).  I’ve written about these regulations many times, on both the need for them and the snail’s pace at which the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) reviewed them. They are long overdue.  Depending on who you ask these new regulations have been in the works since 2009 (beginning of the Obama Administration), 1996 (following an advisory committee report and NIOSH recommendation) or as far back as 1991 (following a…
[Updated: 3 hours after I posted it. See below] Black lung----now referred to by experts as coal mine dust lung disease (CMDLD)--- was back in the news last week courtesy of the Pulitzer Prize. The Center for Public Integrity’s Chris Hamby received the prestigious recognition for his reporting on the steep hurdles faced by coal miners who seek black lung disability compensation. Hamby's piece focused on the back end of the problem. On the front end is preventing CMDLD in the first place. Coal miners wouldn’t have to maneuver the legal obstacle course for disability benefits if CMDLD became a…
You’d think the man responsible for the death of 29 coal miners would show remorse and not subject us to his opinions. Nope. That’s not what we should ever expect from Don Blankenship, the former CEO of Massey Energy. Four years ago this coming Saturday, April 5, will mark the 4th anniversary of the coal dust explosion that killed 29 workers at the Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine. Blankenship thinks it is appropriate to mark the anniversary with his propaganda. Blankenship hired Adroit Films of Chesapeake, VA to produce a documentary called “Upper Big Branch – Never Again.”  It…
[June 25, 2014: Updated below] Seven workers were fatally injured in April 2010 from an explosion and fire at a Tesoro petroleum refinery in Washington State. They were: Daniel J. Aldridge, 50; Matthew C. Bowen, 31; Darrin J. Hoines, 43; Matt Gumbel, 34; Lew Charles Janz, 41; Kathryn Powell, 29; and Donna Van Dreumel, 36. You won’t find their names listed, however, in the official investigation report prepared by the US Chemical Safety Board (CSB). Earlier this week, TPH contributor Lizzie Grossman reported on the CSB’s recent public meeting at which it released a draft of its investigation…
MSHA recently issued two fatality investigation reports for incidents at quarries involving haulage trucks. Both incidents, one in Missouri and the other in Pennsylvania, occurred in September 2013. The reports caught my attention in particular because both include this statement: “Additionally, he was not wearing a seat belt and was ejected from the haul truck which contributed to the severity of his injuries.” What do we know, or not know, about why some workers fail to wear their seatbelts? First, here are a few details about the fatalities: One involved a 1980 Caterpillar 773B haul truck…
(Update below (1/10/2014)) Obama’s “regulatory tsunami” is the term used by the US Chamber of Commerce to describe an expected flood of new regulations. Their message to the business community is that the floodgates will soon open and all of them will drown in red tape. The Chamber’s president Tom Donohue said it last month in a speech, and he’s been saying it for years. But him saying it, and us seeing it are two different things. In the worker health and safety world, there’s been no tsunami. For Obama’s first five years, it’s been more like a slow drip at the kitchen faucet. Remember, this…
This week will mark the 90-day point of the Labor Department submitting for White House review one of its top priority regulations to protect coal miners' health. It's a rule to prevent black lung disease. The director of the office that conducts those reviews, Howard Shelanski, promised earlier this year during his confirmation hearing that timely review of agencies' regulations would be a top priority. Mr. Shelanski said: “I absolutely share the concern you just raised about timeliness. ...I recognized that EO 12866 establishes the initial 90 day review process, and it would be one of my…
Roger R. King, 62, in West Virginia. Robert Smith, 47, in Illinois. Mark Christopher Stassinos, 44, in Wyoming.  Larry Schwartz, 59, in Indiana. Four coal miners, working in four different States, employed by four different mining companies, all fatally injured on the job during the first eleven days of the government shutdown.  King was employed at CONSOL's McElroy mine, Smith at Alliance Resources' Pattiki mine, Stassinos at PacifiCorp's Bridger mine, and Schwartz at Five Star Mining's Prosperity Mine. I didn’t learn of these deaths from anything posted on the Mine Safety and Health…