MSHA Redefines Mining Deaths

By Ken Ward Jr.

kward@wvgazette.com

After several years of complaints that it had stopped counting certain deaths, the Bush administration has formally narrowed its definition of a mining-related fatality.

Since at least 1988, the U.S. Mine Safety Administration followed a broad policy to generally count as mining-related all deaths that occurred on mine property.

The new policy would tighten that definition in several ways that critics say are aimed at helping the mining industry make death numbers appear lower.

“They are more interested in keeping the numbers down than actually protecting miners from being killed,” said Dennis O’Dell, chief safety officer for the United Mine Workers union.

MSHA chief Richard Stickler, in an interview Friday, said that the new policy is “very similar” to the previous language, but clarified several issues that were unclear before.

Stickler developed the new policy over the last two months, after he promised to review the issue following repeated questions and critical news reports.

The new policy was distributed to MSHA personnel in a memo dated Feb. 9, but not announced publicly until it was posted on the agency’s Web site Wednesday morning.

Previously, MSHA policy stated that, “If a worker is killed on mine property, the death of that worker is chargeable.”

The policy defined a worker as “employees of the mine, salesmen, delivery people, all construction workers employed in any construction capacity at the mine and others with business at the mine.”

One exemption to the policy was that, “the fatalities of heart attack victims and of other workers who die on mine property from personal impairment not complicated by or resulting from their work activity will not be chargeable.”

In addition, the policy said that, “If a contractor servicing non- mining facilities on the surface of a mine, or an employee such as a contractor, is fatally injured, the fatality will be charged to the mining industry, if the injury was caused by the mine.”

Under the new policy, called a “Fatal Injury Guideline Matrix,” deaths will not be counted unless they release from mine activity, involve people authorized to be on the site, and are not attributable to natural causes like a heart attack, or involve suicide or homicide.

Stickler said that he tried to add language to make it clear that deaths of people who are off mine property that are caused by mining activity should be counted. As examples, he cited deaths by rocks that fly or roll off mine sites, or fall from conveyor belts that are suspended over public roads.

Stickler also reorganized an MSHA committee that resolves questions about accidents where “the evidence documented does not conclusively show that the death is chargeable.”

Stickler said he wanted to get MSHA field personnel, such as district managers, out of that process. Under the new rules, MSHA officials from program support and information resources, technical support, education policy and the solicitor’s office will serve on the committee.

Davitt McAteer, who ran MSHA during the Clinton administration, said that the new policy is focused too much on whether deaths are counted and not enough on learning from deaths to avoid repeat accidents.

When accidents are not charged to the industry, MSHA does not do as detailed an investigation, McAteer said. That means lessons may not be learned.

O’Dell said that the UMW is especially concerned about language that excludes deaths where the victim was not authorized to be on the mine site.

“The operators may argue that someone may not have had authorization to be on mine property,” O’Dell said.

O’Dell and Celeste Monforton, a former MSHA official who studies public health at George Washington University, also criticized the new policy’s exemption of deaths by natural causes.

“If a miner dies of a heart attack at his job site, or shortly after leaving work, wouldn’t it be worthwhile for MSHA to assess the environmental factors to which the worker was exposed?” Monforton said. “For example, was he a mechanic working underground with diesel-powered equipment and high exposure to diesel particulate matter? Was he a motorman involved in complex longwall move and exposed to high levels of air contaminants?”

Questions about MSHA’s policy continued this year, when the agency declined to count the death of a delivery driver who died when his vehicle collided with another vehicle on a haul road at a mine in Boone County.

In September 1995, MSHA had counted a similar death in Martin County, Ky., but in 2004 refused to count the death of a mine security guard who collided with a coal truck on a mine road in Boone County.

UMW officials have been complaining since late 2003 that the Bush administration had narrowed the definition of fatal accidents it counts as “chargeable” to the mining industry.

But controversy over that definition dates back even further.

In the mid-1980s, Consolidation Coal Co. fought with MSHA to have the death of a miner at its Buchanan Mine in Virginia ruled as a heart attack, to preserve the mine’s accident-free record in 1985.

Initially, a coroner had ruled that 25-year-old Bruce Ballard was electrocuted. Later, a second autopsy – forced by a CONSOL appeal – ruled the death a heart attack.

In a Friday interview, Stickler said that he reviewed some of the previous deaths that critics said should have been – but weren’t – counted by MSHA over the last few years.

“I did look at them, and I had questions in my own mind,” he said. “But I don’t want to take time to go back and critique everything that’s happened here for how many years you want to go back. I want to focus on the future.”

To contact staff writer Ken Ward Jr., use e-mail or call 348- 1702.

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