NIOSH Safety and Health Topic:

Data and Statistics in Mining

The Surveillance, Statistics, and Research Support activities at NIOSH's Pittsburgh and Spokane Research Laboratories are involved in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of safety and health data related to mining occupations in order to report on the overall incidence, prevalence, and significance of mining occupational safety and health problems. Reports on trends in incidence of mining-related fatalities, morbidity, and traumatic injury are prepared. Involvement includes the participation and coordination of research projects and institute-wide surveillance initiatives. The activities provide consultation in the formulation of research questions, study design, data collection, and statistical methods to support laboratory research.

Highlights: National Survey of the Mining Population
As part of the process to improve the safety and health of miners, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) tracks the number and rates of injuries, fatalities, and disease over time and in specific mining subgroups. A variety of databases are available to carry out such tracking. However, data are lacking to describe the mining population in terms of job title, years of mining experience, work locations, gender, ethnicity, race, age, and education level. Such information would assist in customizing safety and health interventions and calculating rates for various subgroups. To fill this gap, the NIOSH Pittsburgh Research Laboratory is conducting a survey of the mining population.

Graphs, Tables, and Maps

Graphs, tables, and maps summarizing a variety of information reported to the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) are generated on a regular basis. Data used to create these graphs, tables, and maps were obtained from the MSHA databases of reported employment and reported cases of accident/injury/illness for mine operators as well as independent contractors working on mine property. See Methodology for further details.

Mining Fact Sheets

Mining Fact Sheets covering a variety of topics of general interest relating to mining operations, workers, fatalities, nonfatal lost-time injuries, and occupational illness. Fact sheets are now available for each of the mining commodity sectors and further fact sheets are under development.

MSHA Data File Downloads

Data files on mining accidents, injuries, fatalities, employment, production, etc., are collected by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) under Part 50 of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations (CFR 30 Part 50). Original raw data files are released periodically to the public on the MSHA web site. As a convenience, data from 1983 to 2003 have been converted to dBase IV and SPSS (which includes labels and coding information) file formats and are available for download.

Statistical Publications

The following papers are in Portable Document Format (PDF) and require Adobe® Reader® to view. Download the latest version of the free reader software at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html.

Injuries, Illnesses, and Hazardous Exposures in the Mining Industry, 1986-1995: A Surveillance Report. DHHS (NIOSH) Publication No. 99-161. The report summarizes available data on work-related fatal and nonfatal injuries in the mining industry for the 10-year period 1986-1995.
Worker Health Chartbook, 2000. DHHS (NIOSH), Publication No. 2000-127. The section Focus on Mining presents a detailed overview of mining and injuries. This report includes a historical perspective of fatal injuries during the 85-year period 1911-1995, along with data on fatal and lost work-day injuries during the 10-year period 1988-1997.
Worker Health Chartbook, 2000, Focus on Mining published by DHHS (NIOSH), Publication No. 2002-121, May 2002. Contents of this booklet were taken from the Worker Health Chartbook, 2000.
The Worker Health Chartbook, 2004 consolidates information from the network of injury and illness surveillance tracking systems in the U.S. and is designed for agencies, organizations, employers, researchers, workers, and others who need to know about occupational injuries and illnesses. Chapter 4 focuses on the high-risk occupations in the mining and construction industries. The Chartbook is available on-line in both PDF and HTML formats.

You may obtain printed copies of these publications by contacting the NIOSH Publication Office at 800-35-NIOSH or sending an E-mail to pubstaft@cdc.gov.

NIOSHTIC-2 Search

NIOSHTIC-2 search results on Mining Data and Statistics

is a searchable bibliographic database of occupational safety and health publications, documents, grant reports, and journal articles supported in whole or in part by NIOSH.