Not long after a miner who maintained a dust collector machine at a cement facility in San Bernardino County, California, contacted the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) about safety hazards, he was suspended and then terminated, in April 2014.
Wielding a large rotating steel drum equipped with sharp tungsten carbide teeth, a continuous mining machine scrapes coal from the mine’s seams and drops it onto conveyor belts or into shuttle cars for transport to the surface.
Chester Fike was just in his 30s when he was diagnosed with black lung. As the disease progressed, the West Virginia coal miner was eventually so incapacitated that a simple walk with his family was impossible. In the summer of 2012, four months after a double lung transplant raised hopes for a second chance, Fike lost his fight for life at 60.
Agency releases preliminary fatality data for 2014
January 12, 2015
Preliminary data released by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration indicates that 40 miners died in work-related accidents at the nation’s mines in 2014, two fewer than in the previous year.
Long-term changes seen at relatively low exposure levels
January 9, 2015
People exposed to asbestos from mining in Libby, Mont., show long-term changes in lung imaging and function tests, even with relatively low asbestos exposure, reports a study in the January Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM).
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration says federal inspectors issued 199 citations and 19 orders during special impact inspections conducted at 10 coal mines and six metal and nonmetal mines in November.
The following was posted on Saturday, Dec. 6: One hundred seven years ago today in Monongah, West Virginia, 362 coal miners – many of them teenage boys — went to work and never came home. That morning, an explosion ripped through two connected mines.
Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez got a taste of the coal miner’s life on Dec. 1, when he descended 1,000 feet below the earth’s surface for an underground tour of a Cumberland Coal Resources LP mine in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania.
The market forecast is based on financial data for 9,307 firms with more than $500 million in annual revenue headquartered in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, the UK and the U.S.
The recovery of the mining industry following industrialization in emerging economies and investments in mining to support the demand for metals and commodities have brightened prospects in personal protective equipment (PPE) globally.