Summary
UNDERGROUND mines have filled the news this year with their dangers and tragedies, but as a Sunday Gazette-Mail analysis shows, surface mine operations are also dangerous places to work. All the rules intended to make them safer are not necessarily carried out.
Surface mines produce two-thirds of the nation's coal with fewer deaths than underground mining. But the work is not nearly as safe as it could be. Appalachian strip mines contribute 20 percent of the nation's surface-mined coal, but 75 percent of the nation's surface mine deaths. After six months of study, reporter Ken Ward Jr. found that, just as most underground mining deaths could have been prevented, the same goes for surface mining. Across the country, 71 strip miners died on the job between 1996 and 2005. Sixty-two of them, or 88 percent, might have lived if existing safety rules had been followed.See the full content of this document
Extract
Mining Deaths: ; Change Needed
Surface mine workers can die when rocky hillsides suddenly slide down and crush them inside their mach...
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