Blue-Ribbon Panel Zeroes In on Culture Change
"We are tremendously safer. But it's not good enough to say that."
Editor's note: Safety in U.S. coal mines has been a front-burner issue since a methane explosion killed 12 miners Jan. 2, 2006, inside the Sago Mine, located near Buckhannon in Upshur County, W.Va. That incident sparked the MINER Act, an important reform of federal mine safety regulations; a 101-page report delivered in July 2006 to West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin III; and an independent, 10-member commission of experts created by the National Mining Association to examine mine safety technology and training. The commission's chairman is Dr. R. Larry Grayson, Ph.D., who chairs the University of Missouri-Rolla's Department of Mining and Nuclear Engineering. Grayson is an experienced underground mine superintendent who was associate director of NIOSH's Office for Mine Safety and Health Research from November 1997 to November 2000. In an Aug. 8 interview with the editor of Occupational Health & Safety, he discussed the state of coal mine safety and how the commission hopes to improve it.
How has the commission's work proceeded?
Dr. Larry Grayson: Soon after the Sago Mine disaster, the National Mining Association had approached me to see whether I would be willing to serve as chair for a commission that would be composed and empowered to do an independent study of the condition of mine safety in the United States. Obviously focusing on the emergency side of things, it would study mine health and safety in such a way to determine how the United States could regain a global leadership position, not just in productivity but also in safety.
Were you looking more at human factors or technology?
The study cut across everything. Technology across four different areas, the training requirements relative to responses during emergencies, but also a comprehensive approach towards prevention of accidents in general through a good risk assessment process.
All of that obviously affects the performance levels of individuals all the way up to management--the way they go about building a safety culture.
Was there a sense this had lapsed? Or that we've never been where we need to be?
I think all of the commissioners, who had been in the industry, were quite surprised. Quite honestly, our study had showed that, from 1993 through 1999--that's a seven-year period--there were no fatalities because of fires and explosions in U.S. underground coal mines.
To achieve this type of culture change across the industry will require a tremendous effort. |
We knew there had been fires and explosion fatalities before, in the '80s and the '90s, but examination showed there was not one in that seven-year period. All of a sudden, something happened, from 2000, when we first started seeing a couple, and then 2001 with Jim Walters Resources [#5 Mine, two explosions that killed 13], and then steadily throughout the 2000s, culminating early this year, if you will, with a terrible series of tragedies.
This really hit everyone in the industry right between the eyes. And we were sitting there saying, "What happened?"
There are 71 recommendations in the Commission report, things that really need to be done seriously for the industry to get back to the point where there are zero fatalities from fires and explosions, and beyond.
Alternative Seals Under the Microscope
What had changed?
In the period before 1993, say from 1984 through 1992, we had seen disasters occurring primarily because of inadequate ventilation. And then, for whatever reason, [methane] was ignited, sometimes along haulage ways where there was no requirement for "permissibility."
In the really dangerous areas of a mine, up in the face areas where they cut the coal, methane is generated--sometimes fairly liberally, sometimes not as much, but it's always there. It's also in the return airways: Clean air is directed there, where the people work, and then it sweeps away the methane and dust and removes them to what we call a return airway. This path returns the air back outside again. Well, that's what miners depend on to keep everything in good, working order and remove the hazards.
What had happened was, the ventilation around complex areas that were mined out already--we call them gob areas, which can be fairly extensive at times--[these] were really difficult to ventilate effectively; it takes a good effort to make the ventilation system work right, to sweep across these gob areas and take the methane away from the active workings and into bleeder systems around those areas. That's the way the ventilation needs to be done, and someone must hawk after it to make sure that it's maintained properly to do what it was intended to do.
This article originally appeared in the November 2006 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.